


Braver Than We Are

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gore, Post canon, Slow Burn, Vampires, revised from the original version posted on FanFiction.Net, vampire AU taken seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2019-08-27 15:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 72,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16705270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Strange and sinister things have been happening since Beth's passing.  Jo worries that she might be going mad, but it's not nearly as simple as that.





	1. Chapter 1

It was thirteen minutes to midnight. Jo had to smile, though her heart was pounding somewhat too thunderously for comfort. Alone in the attic, her pen and paper only just visible in the precarious candle-light, she assumed part of the mad literary spinster with long practiced ease.

It wasn't the storm outside that had roused her from her sleep, though the wind howled and rattled against the windows, as if singularly determined to break through. The fact was, Jo didn't have any clear recollection of having slept at all, nor did she remember waking. She had dreamt-- of that much she was certain, but the whole experience had been so peculiar, so seemingly detached from rationality, that it had left her no choice but to write it all down. What other method did Jo have of making sense of things? She had naught but her pen and paper to bully reality back into its usual dull confines.

She was slow to start. She hadn't written since Beth's passing, and all she managed in the first fifteen minutes of trying was a series of senseless lines and swirls in the far right corner of her paper. Then, for a time, the words came, but only separated by long stretches in which the tip of her pen hovered uncertainly for so long that the ink dried up, and she had to reapply it.

A sudden crash made Jo jump to her feet, nearly upsetting the candle. It came again, an almost organic thumping, as though a large bird were throwing itself repeatedly against the glass. Jo did not peer out the window to see what had caused the noise, but pulled the curtains tightly shut before returning to her seat, where she stooped with her head in her hands for a moment before crumpling the paper she had begun to write on. Dipping her pen once more in the ink and taking a deep breath, she began anew.

_Dear Teddy,_

_I suppose it's been too long since I sent you a letter. In fact, I don't much want to write to you at this very moment, only I'm sure you would laugh at me. I desperately need to be laughed at, believe it or not, and I'm afraid that anyone but you would take the tale I'm about to tell with undue gravity. After all, I've made enough of a mockery of your sentimental side that you oughtn't have any reason to concern yourself with my current state of mind, whatever that is._

_While I was away in New York, I wrote some of the most ridiculous, ghastly sensation stories ever to make their way to the printing press. Such trash pays much better than you'd ever imagine. I was resolved never to write another, but I suppose this one last time won't hurt anything. Allow me to introduce myself, one Josephine March, as the heroine of our intrepid tale._

Jo paused to stare at the curtains before continuing.

_It's storming tonight, and the wind was making such a noise that I couldn't rest, and so I fell to watching the rain through my window. This was all well at first, and I thought for sure that I would drift off soon, but then I noticed a white figure standing far off (if you'd like, you may insert a clap of thunder, or something else suitably dramatic here). It came closer at the same moment that I got out of bed to get a better look at it, and soon we were separated only by a pane of glass._

_It was a young woman, or perhaps a girl, her thin lace trimmed dress sticking to her from the rain. Indeed, she seemed quite ageless. She was pale, every bit as much so as the material clung to her skin, and she had brown hair and blue eyes that were overly bright, as if they had absorbed all of the scant light around her. She looked calm, though she didn't smile._

_I was just beginning to think that I'd never seen a person stand so still and serene, except sometimes for Beth when she was deep in thought, when the idea that the girl was Beth got into my head. The features were hers, right down to the long fingers which she lifted to press against the glass. If only there had been some color in her cheeks, she could have been my Beth._

_Am I ridiculous, Teddy, to blame myself for looking away? I only did it for a fraction of a second, if that, but when I looked back she was gone, and I knew that what I'd seen was no comforting image. I wouldn't have wished for it. There was nothing ugly or outwardly frightening about the girl, but I felt cold, as if I'd seen something evil._

_I've seen the girl three times now, always at night. I've never spoken to her; that would be madness. Madder even, than writing this letter to you, which I know better than to send. I might as create an imaginary friend (other than my Beth figment, that is), for all that this correspondence is worth. Only, I can't be alone with my thoughts right now. I can't. That's why I had to address them to somebody._

_Of course, I can't tell this to Marmee. I would never keep a secret from her, but she's grieving and I already fear that I add to it more than I help in this time of trouble. I miss Beth terribly. I won't wish her back -- that would be wrong, for I know she's gone to paradise, and I'll see her again when my time comes. I will wish for an end to this strange fancy about the girl. For now all I can do is ignore it, or do my best to find a sensible explanation that doesn't involve lunacy._

_You know that I'm not one to break under pressure. I'd even flatter myself that I thrive on it. This, however, is not like anything I've experienced before. I don't mean my visions, but everything else. I'm so_

"Jo?"

Jo nearly jumped out of her seat for the second time that evening, but when she looked up, it was only Marmee standing in the doorway. Jo gave her a tired smile.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, as Marmee walked over to her, "So I thought I'd try and write something. Not the next great novel, mind you, but something."

"It will do you good to return your writing,” was Marmee's decided reply. To her credit, she did not look at the piece of paper that Jo was carefully folding.

For a moment Jo was still, glancing again towards the closed curtain, as Marmee stroked her long hair away from her face, and kissed the top of her head.

"I shouldn't be up this late, at any rate," Jo said, cheerfully enough. "We should both get some rest."

With that, she blew out the candle.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a time jump of several months between this chapter and the prologue.

"It's lucky for you for you that Meg and the babies are so obliging, or I'm sure you'd never get away with any of this," Jo said, as she helped Laurie to balance a suspicious looking grey-wrapped bundle, which he was in the process of mounting on the wall.

"Only for me, Jo? Are you now denying your role as co-conspirator?" Laurie asked, in a mischievous tone that made Jo glad that he could not prod or push her without the possibility of compromising their work.

"Not for a moment, my dear boy, but I've a much longer history than you, when it comes to living with Amy. You might say I'm an expect on the subject."

"...and? What have you got to say, Madame expert? " Laurie backed up a few steps, to look admiringly at the wall above the fireplace. Four similar square shaped packages now hung there, all shrouded in the same ordinary gray fabric, which stood out in sharp contrast to the ornate furnishings of the library where he and Jo presently stood.

"Only that my dear sister is harder to keep secrets from than you'll ever guess."

"Don't underestimate my knowledge of Amy. She is, after all, my wife," Laurie replied, turning to Jo with such a look of bright buoyancy that it made her feel quite giddy. It was good to have him home, and so like himself again. "Besides," he continued, "I haven't got any secrets."

"Do you mean to say, then, that you stole --"

"Borrowed, if you please."

"Shamefully abducted your beloved wife's portfolio in her full view, and with her whole-hearted consent?"

"Abducted? Come now, Jo. Next you'll tell me that the paintings were kicking and screaming, as I brutally encased them in glass."

"Yes, exactly. And now you've gone and put them up where everyone can stop and stare at their captivity… What a grand sight it will make! I wish Amy would hurry home."

Laurie did not answer, but sat down on the edge of one of the room's many well stuffed couches, looking both content and inexpressively eager. Jo, for her part, played at tidying the room, though it really didn't need any tidying at all. For the longest time she had thought that something alive and vital had passed out of her when Beth drew her last breath. Now it was back, she was so relieved to feel happy again, that she refused to reflect too heavily on the way the feeling was intertwined with Laurie's return.

The new Laurence house was still strange to Jo, and while she thought that the style and furnishing of the place perfectly suited its inhabitants, it also felt fanciful, as if it were all part of child's game. Here and there she could find bits and pieces of familiarity -- a well worn book that she remembered borrowing as a girl, a set of wooden soldiers displayed on a windowsill which had long ago (but not _that_ long ago) guarded the top of Laurie's wardrobe at his grandfather's house. The day before he had embraced her tightly, after catching her staring too long at an embroidered pillow which Beth had given Amy one Christmas.

"There was one thing I meant to ask you about Amy." Laurie said, at length.

"Yes?" replied, looking up at him over the book that her nose had inadvertently found its way into.

"Has she ever had any predilection towards sleepwalking?"

"Sleepwalking?" Jo closed her book, and took a seat next to Laurie. "Mercy no. You don't mean to tell me she's started? She's been known to hit in her sleep, if you try to wake her when she'd rather you didn't -- take heed! But no, she's never gotten out of her bed and walked around in her sleep."

"Well, she did last night. Don't think I'm a brute, Jo, but by the time I woke up and noticed she was gone, she'd made it all the way down to the river, behind the Patten's farm."

"That's more than a mile away! How did you ever find her? How is she?"

"I didn't know where to look at first, but then I heard a low growl in the distance -- not exactly like the sound a wolf makes, but that's the closest description I've got.” Laurie shook his head. "I haven't the foggiest notion what the blasted thing was -- but I followed the sound until I'd found Amy. Whatever it was, it wasn't there with her, and it didn't leave any prints that I could see."

"And Amy?"

"She had no idea how she'd gotten outside, and was rather bewildered. Swore up and down that nothing like this had ever happened before, but I thought perhaps she wouldn't know if it only happened while she was sleeping."

"It was probably just a one off," was Jo's reassuring response. Seeing that Laurie still looked worried, she patted his shoulder, and continued. "She had some sort of a queer dream that set her walking. I'm sure it won't happen again."

"What about the growling?" Laurie asked.

In the few seconds that passed between Laurie's question and the sound of the front door swinging open, the fanciful part of Jo's mind had ample time to prepare at least a dozen explanations, each one stranger than the last; Alas, her more sensible thoughts were lagging shamefully behind, and she was left without a chance to answer Laurie's question in the comforting way he'd hoped she would. Jumping to her feet, Jo ran to the door to meet Amy, as she and Laurie had planned.


	3. Chapter 3

\-------------------------------------------------

If Amy was surprised that it was not her husband but Jo who ran up to greet her, she had no time to reflect upon it, as Jo was quickly accosted by two small surprises of her own. 

"Auntie!" Daisy shrieked, squirming out of Amy's arms and into Jo's, with all the disarming fickleness typical of a child her age. Demi was quick to follow suit, and he came at Jo with such force that she was nearly knocked over before she'd recovered enough to sweep the children up in her arms.

"It's so good to see you my dears," Jo said, placing a kiss on each little head. She was smiling broadly, and Amy sensed immediately that there was rather something more to it than the two wriggling babes in her arms.

"I must say, I wasn't expecting to see you here, Jo!" Amy said, trying to keep her voice light, which was hard, when her head felt so very heavy. She hadn't slept well the night before, and much as she loved Jo, she had hoped that her dear husband would have taken that into account before subjecting her to company. As things were, he'd refused to leave her alone this morning until she'd agreed to go over to Meg's.

Daisy was doing her utmost to pull away the net that Jo had tucked her long hair into, and mostly succeeding, for Jo put up no resistance. Strange, how normal things seemed to be happening in slow motion this day, Amy mused, for she couldn't rightly tell if she'd been staring at Jo for only a few seconds, or for several minutes. 

"That was the idea, you goose! Look at you, just standing in the doorway of your own house, as if waiting for me to invite you in…. Amy?" Jo placed the twins gently on the floor, a look of concern on her face.

"Auntie Jo! Auntie Jo!" Daisy interrupted, with a swift pull at Jo’s skirts. "Isn't Auntie Amy pretty! She's the most prettiest woman I ever sawed"

Then Amy laughed, and from that point all was well.

"The children are so taken with you," said Meg beaming, the picture of contented motherhood.

"Close your eyes this instant, Amy!" Jo whispered, pulling her inside. "Meg, not a word from you."

"Of course not."

"What sort of trick are you playing on me, Jo?" Amy asked, but she smiled, and shut her eyes compliantly.

"I wannna close my eyes too!" Amy heard Demi whisper, which Daisy echoed with a spirited, "Me too mommy! Me too!"

"Alright then. Hold on to me, darlings." Came Meg's voice, from somewhere behind Amy.

Thus Amy found herself being led around her house in what seemed like endless circles, clutching Jo's firm hand, while the twins giggled behind them. Soon she felt entirely disoriented, and only wished that the sense of fun wasn't somewhat marred by the thought of the previous night's strange travels. If closing her eyes and being lead around her own home made her so unaware of her surroundings, how had she made it all the way to the river without falling into a hole and killing herself, or at the very least knocking over a table or two on her way out?

Just as Amy was beginning to feel well and truly dizzy, they stopped.

"Can I open my eyes now?" Amy asked. Jo's hands came quickly up over them, as if saying ‘don't you dare!’ Amy felt Jo's other arm come around her waist, holding her still.

"Mommy, what's that ugly thing on the--" Demi’s voice was muffled before he could finish.

"On the couch? Why, that's only your uncle Laurie, and I'll thank you not to talk of him in such a way,” said Jo, close to Amy's ear. "He isn't a thing and he certainly isn't ugly…" Laurie was laughing somewhere not far off, and this must have encouraged Jo, for she continued, "He's far from handsome, mind you, but I that doesn't give you leave to speak so cruelly of him."

"There's no use trying to shield me!" Laurie sighed theatrically, but the effect was much diminished by his continued laughter. "Amy, darling, I hope Jo has prepared you for the results of the disfiguring accident I suffered only this morning…"

"Quiet, now, and kiss your wife before I let her open her eyes. You'll never get another chance, once she sees you."

"Prepare yourself Amy!" Meg cried, for even she was getting into the spirit of things.

"Mommy, there are four of them!" Demi took advantage of his mother's momentary distraction to shout.

Amy felt Laurie's warm lips press against hers, and he lifted her off her feet and turned her around, after giving Jo only a few seconds to back away. When he put her down, flushed and grinning, she found herself in the library face to face with four swatches of grey fabric.

"This is very… what is this?" Amy asked. She moved forward to lift the bits of fabric, and see what could be hiding beneath them, but Laurie put out his hand to stop her.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Laurie said, in a grand tone that rather reminded Amy of the long ago days when they had acted Jo's plays up in the attic. "We have invited you all here today to witness the unveiling of a series of great artistic masterpieces. Jo, if you please--"

Jo dashed out ahead of them, whipping the grey off the first painting, with an undeniable flare. Amy gasped at once. It was her own work, a field of swaying lavender under a cloudy sky at the convent gardens in London. What a day that had been! She remembered the fragrant wind that had nearly wrestled the picture from her grasp even as she was painting it, the distant rumble and purr of thunder, the scent of approaching rain just detectable beneath that of the flowers. It was surrounded now by an ornate frame of rich, dark wood, which made it look like something much grander than Amy had ever imagined it could be.

Soon Jo had pulled the fabric off the second painting (a busy Parisian street scene), and the third (a tiny Swiss cottage, where Amy and Flo had spent the day speaking broken French, with the hospitable inhabitants.), and only the fourth painting remained.

"I hope you don't think me terribly vain for this one, darling,” Laurie murmured against her ear, his dear arms still tight around her.

It was the sketch that Amy had drawn long ago, of Laurie taming the horse, and which she had shown him on that day in Niece.

"A fellow likes to have his portrait hung properly above the mantle…"

At first all Amy could do was stare up in surprise and wonder. Finally, she managed to say, in a somewhat awed tone, "But surely, my Lord, you could find something better than my…"

"Nonsense." Laurie cut her off quickly, his arms tightening. "There isn't an artist in the world whose work I like better than yours." He kissed the top of her head, before adding seriously, "You must promise never to give up painting. Don't chase after fame, if it doesn't suit you, but do it for yourself, and for me."

On one side Amy could see Meg explaining to Daisy and Demi just where the "beautiful" pictures had come from; the children laughed and clapped, and begged to know more about Auntie Amy's adventures in Europe, which may as well have been a fairyland to them, as far off as it was. On the other side Jo stood staring up at the paintings, looking rather like she did not belong to the scene, now that her part had been played out. Soon none of that mattered though, as Laurie pulled her in for a kiss. Amy returned it, and that was promise enough.

It was the sort of kiss— long, warm, and passionate— which should have been something that could sustain an unrequited lover through a thousand years of lonely nights, or fueled a marriage lived in that elusive realm called "happily ever after" through countless repetitions. Real life, however, does not always work out precisely as it should, and soon we shall discover why.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

Even looking back on the blissful happiness that the day had brought her, there was no escaping the lethargy that had settled upon Amy during the course of it all. And so, as soon as Meg and the children had left, Amy curled up in the arm chair which had already been deemed Laurie's, sinking into the cushions as if into an embrace.

"Look at her, she's sleeping,” Jo said, perhaps half an hour later. Of course, Amy wasn't, but as it was very pleasant to sit there with her eyes closed, she didn't feel any need to make that fact known.

"I shouldn't wonder, after last night. Say, you haven't told me what you thought of that growling."

The growling. It took an effort on Amy's part not to sit up with a start. So she hadn't imagined it! Frantically, she tried not to think of the other things which she believed she had imagined, and hoped that Laurie would not verify those as well.

"The Patten's do keep that toothless old German shepherd," was Jo's soothing response. "He can no longer bite, so it's very well that he might growl."

"And you think he ran away when he saw me coming."

"…Perhaps." A long pause, and then Jo continued. "Watch her carefully tonight, and try not to worry too much. In a few weeks the two of you will laugh over it, and it will be a nice story to tell at parties."

"If I want Amy to murder me! It's not the sort of thing that one talks of in society, Jo."

Amy could not hear Jo shrugging, but she could imagine it clearly enough. What, after all, did Jo know about society?

Soon Jo and Laurie were engaged in an animated discussion about the Pickwick Portfolio, and Amy drifted off into a real sleep.

It may have been minutes or hours later, but eventually Amy opened her eyes, squinting at the light in the room. Laurie was standing in the doorway with Jo, speaking to her in the serious tone that he sometimes used.

"You'll be over again tomorrow, I hope?" Laurie asked.

"If I spend any more time over here than I already do, you'll have to install an extra bed for me, in the basement somewhere… and a supply of quills and writing paper, naturally." Jo laughed.

"Is that all? I'll have someone in tomorrow to set up your living quarters, and make sure it's all arranged to your liking." Laurie laughed as well, but then he took Jo's hand, and said in a softer tone, "Truly Jo, you must come over and see us as often as you can."

"I'll see about it." Jo pulled her hand away. "But I can't be here everyday, and I have faith that you two newly weds can manage very well without me."

"Manage without you? Never Jo." Laurie placed a kiss on her cheek that anyone would describe as being brotherly, but something in his stance made Amy glad that she could not see his eyes. Perhaps it was enough that Jo saw them, for she left very quickly, barely stopping long enough to call "Goodnight Teddy!" over her shoulder.

Laurie stood at the doorway for some time, before turning and seeing that Amy was awake. He was at her side in an instant.

"Are you very happy tonight, My Lady?" He asked.

"I don't know." She answered, immediately regretting it, as his face fell. "Oh, it was a lovely surprise that you had planned for me today." Amy sat up quickly, and only to wish that she hadn't. "Every woman should hope to have a husband such as you. It's only that I'm so very tired, I don't know up from down."

Laurie's brow creased, and he brushed his hand across her forehead. "You haven't got a fever." 

"No, I'm not sick. It's only that I'm not used to spending my nights standing by rivers. I'll be fine tomorrow morning, I promise."

"Come on then, sleepy head." Laurie said, in his most amiable tone. "Lets get you tucked in to bed."

It was the first night since their marriage that they didn't make love.

\----------------------

Amy's feet were bare. She could feel the cold ground beneath them, and the long grass which tickled up to her knees. It was night, but the sky around her wasn't black, but rather the most disorienting shade of grey. The grey clung to her, cold and wet, seeming to seep into her bones. It flashed red, slithered is way through her veins, and then it was gone, and the girl's face was buried in her neck.

"I can't come with you, Beth dear."

They had been conversing for quite awhile, Amy thought. Hours perhaps, though she couldn't quite remember what had been said. The girl's cold hands were upon her cheeks, and their faces were so close that their foreheads were nearly touching.

"How many times must I tell you I'm not Beth?" the child whispered. "I love Beth dearly, but she's not me, any more than I'm her."

"Oh, but you are."

"If I were Beth, I would be crying. All Beth ever does is cry. I never cry, so I can't be Beth." The girl's fingers were too small and too cold; they felt like madness, as they gently stroked Amy's hair and forehead.

"I know you," Amy said, because she was sure that she did know the girl child, more perhaps than she'd ever known anyone in her life. She wanted to pull away, or run, or jump into the river that she could hear close behind her, but she couldn't move. The girl was laughing.

"Of course you know me,” the girl said. "Why not come with me?"

"I prefer to live, and take what I may out of life, as long as I can be happy." Amy almost did manage to pull away this time, as thoughts of home filled her head. If the scene before her had been a mere nightmare, she might have been able to will herself out of it just then, back to her safe bed with her husband breathing beside her. As things were, there girl's hands were tangled in her hair, and she simply hadn't the strength to stand.

"I give you leave to do that, because you won't be happy for very long." The girl hissed.

Amy could not even shake her head.

"You'll take what you can out of life, if I let you." The girl continued, "But you've already made a mistake. I may watch those who have a chance at happiness, but I never touch them. Quiet now. No sniveling, you're too much of a lady for that. You'll come with me calmly and quietly when the time comes, for you've married a man who loves your sister, and I know you can never abide by that."

"I could never abide it if it were true, but it isn't, and I'll show you if I must."

The girl was gone. Amy was standing. The stars were overhead, the wolf behind her was growling and licking at its lips again, and Laurie… Laurie was standing before her, his face full of anxiety. She fancied she could see her face mirrored in his dark eyes, her own eyes too wide and terrified.

"Amy? Darling, don't cry, you've only been sleepwalking again. I'll take you home now."

Ah, she was crying, wasn't she? Her breath came in great gasps that she couldn't begin to control, and she thought she said some senseless thing about teeth, or wolves, or being cold. She couldn't be sure, because the next moment the sun was streaming in through her window, and Laurie was reclining beside her in their bed, watching her carefully.

"Do you regret marrying me?" Amy asked, almost hoping that the words would not reach her husband's ears. They did, however, and he kissed her forehead and then her lips in the most gratifying fashion.

"Not in the least. What a thing to ask first thing in the morning."

Amy buried her head in the pillow, feeling slightly ashamed of what she must ask next.

"You're not to worry about what happened last night," Laurie continued, perhaps misinterpreting the flush that rose on Amy's pale face. "I've sent for Dr. Bangs, and he'll give you something to make sure you sleep properly from here on out, and you won't have to worry about anything again."

With effort, Amy swallowed her question. It would only hurt him, and he was being so kind to her. Instead she asked, in a small voice, "Will Jo be visiting today?" Laurie smiled, and she shut her eyes, as if out of mere tiredness.

"Would you like her to? You said her name last night, just before you fainted, but I couldn't make out any more than that."

Amy shook her head. "Please don't let her come over here today. I feel so strange. I just--- I don't want any company at all. None except for yours, that is."


	4. Chapter 4

When Doctor Bangs arrived Amy was sitting up in bed, lethargically sipping at the cup of tea which Laurie had insisted she take. She didn't have the heart to tell him that it tasted strange and metallic, or that it unsettled her stomach -- not when he was watching her so eagerly and so intently. Nonetheless, she was thankful for an excuse to put the cup aside, even if the good doctor's arrival also meant that she would have to relinquish the many thick blankets she had gathered around herself. She was shivering more than she was willing to own, and it was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering as the doctor gently took hold of her wrist.

"I must confess," said Doctor Bangs in a kind tone, as he took Amy's pulse, "I can hardly believe that you are little Amy March, married now, and back from a trip across the world." The doctor’s hair was grayer than Amy remembered it, but his face was still the familiar one that she knew from as far back as her first childhood earache. As a girl she had been far from a compliant patient, and he had only been able to get through his work by distracting her with tall tales and funny stories. Now, though he chattered on through the examination about travel, art, and other adult subjects, something in his presence made her feel distinctly silly and childish, and she bowed her head as if in unconscious shame.

He checked her temperature, looked inside her mouth and nose, and did all of the usual things. He asked questions about the sleep walking, which Laurie was more able to answer than her, as all she could remember of the experience were strange dreams, which she saw no sense in sharing. She described the dizziness and exhaustion of the day before in a few words, and the shivers she was currently experiencing in even fewer words, as those were quite new.

Suddenly, Doctor Bangs stopped his examination, a graveness that frightened Amy passing over his features for less than a second before he regained his usual, settled expression. His hand rested lightly on her neck, which he had been checking for any unwholesome swelling.

"Mrs. Laurence," the doctor asked, "Can you remember being bitten by an animal recently? A cat or a dog perhaps?"

Amy shook her head, but her eyes widened, as a fragment of her dream seemed to rise for the first time into her conscious mind.

"No," she said darkly. "I'm quite sure I haven't been bitten by any animal."

"Think carefully," Bangs continued, the emphasis apparently lost on him (much to Amy's relief), "Have you encountered any animals lately that were behaving strangely? That seemed confused, perhaps, or were showing a great deal of saliva around the mouth?"

Amy shook her head, raising her hand to touch the spot on her neck that Bangs was scrutinizing so intently. The skin under her hand felt wrong, and she leapt out of bed and ran for the mirror. She pushed her hair back from her neck, and gasped to see two deep puncture marks standing out in sharp contrast against her pale skin.

"I wasn't bitten by an animal," she insisted in a low, but fervent whisper. "I'm absolutely certain that I wasn't, and I'm certain that I haven't seen any strange animals roaming about." Amy shut her eyes, and Laurie came forward, wrapping his arms around her and guiding her back to the bed.

Laurie's arms tightened around Amy, as the doctor asked her strange questions about whether she had been having any difficulty swallowing liquids, and if she had experienced any strange sensitivity to light or sound. These she was able to answer in the negative, and she even took a great gulp of the metallic tasting tea to prove her point. He asked her again, in his most serious tone, if she was sure she had not encountered any strange animals. Then Doctor Bangs told her to rest for a moment, and gestured for Laurie to follow him out of the room, something which Amy was quite certain could not be a good omen.

As a child, Amy might have sat still in bed and tried to behave, while the doctor spoke to her guardians. Then again, she might not have. Besides, a husband was a thing entirely different from a father or a mother, and Amy thought that a wife ought to be considered quite grown enough to be made aware of matters regarding her own health. It was with this thought in her mind that she crept out of bed, pressed her ear against the cool wood of the door, and listened with all her might to the muffled and whispered conversation beyond. Though she could not hear each word, she knew that the Doctor was speaking of mad dogs, listing symptoms (fear of water, fever, involuntary seizures) that they must be on the lookout for, and warning Laurie to be especially careful about kissing her lips, as the disease could be spread through saliva. She did not hear Doctor Bangs tell Laurie that her unusually low temperature was not consistent with dog madness, as she had already returned to bed, thinking she would look very silly if she was found pressed up against the door when it opened.

When Laurie returned, Dr. Bangs at his side, he looked unusually pale, as if he had fallen ill himself. When his arms went around her they were nearly tight enough to hurt her, and the way he kissed the top of her head and rested his chin against her hair could hardly be considered proper in the doctor's presence; all in all, his behavior was that of a man who had been pushed past the point where behavior mattered a whit, and that worried Amy more than anything else.

"Tell me what you believe is happening, please,” Amy said, in a clear voice that she wouldn't allow to tremble. "Before you came, I was sure that I would feel myself again as soon as I could get a proper night's sleep. If I'm wrong, it's your duty to tell me, and to tell me what I must do so that I may get better as quickly as possible."

A rage rose in Amy, such as she had never felt before, as the Doctor told her that she had merely caught a chill while sleepwalking, and that she must keep warm, take medicine to help her sleep through the night, and above all not worry about anything. She did not fly at the Doctor and spit in his face as her momentary impulse told her she ought to, but strong emotions must come out one way or another, and she could not help the tears that came to her eyes any more than she could help clenching her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her skin.

Laurie was quick to feel the change in her, and would have gathered her closer to him, if he hadn't already been holding onto her as though she were life itself. As things were, he shifted her in his arms so she could bury her head against his chest, and bid Doctor Bangs a goodbye which he was polite enough to accept without any comment or hesitation.

"Amy…" Laurie whispered. Her sobs had subsided, and she could hear his heart beating through his shirt. His hands, gentle as ever, moved over through her hair, pushing the long golden curls away from that fateful spot on her neck which had caused the doctor such worry. His hands lingered there, as he said, seemingly more to himself than to her, "I don't think a dog, or any animal could have done this."

"Doctor Bangs does,” Amy said, sitting up and wiping her eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so ridiculous or so childish.

"But you don't."

Amy nodded.

"The marks are too clean to be an animal bite," Laurie continued. He reached to touch her neck again, but then let his hand fall. Amy realized belatedly that she had shifted away to avoid him. "An animal would have… well, your poor throat would be in a far worse state than it is now."

"You don't think I'll go mad, scream at the sight of water, and die a quick an agonizing death then?" Amy glanced up at Laurie, who was looking at her most oddly. "Do you men really think I'm such an idiot? He was asking if I'd seen any dogs frothing at the mouth. Of course I know what that means."

"I'm sorry… that you had to listen to that and be frightened. No wonder…"

Amy interrupted him, with a decisive shake of the head. "No, I'm sorry. I've been acting horribly all morning. It's only that I'm so very tired.” 

Amy reached out for Laurie, putting a hand on each side of his face, and kissing him on the lips. When he didn't pull away, she was satisfied.

\---------------------------------------

After her dinner, which was barely touched, Amy took the sleeping drought that the doctor had prescribed, though she was so exhausted that she could not believe that she needed it. Laurie sat by her side as her breathing evened and the day's anxiety faded out of her face, replaced by what he hoped was a blissful slumber. He watched her for longer still, watched as the candle by their bed burned lower and lower, watched for any sign of the panic and shivers which had plagued her periodically throughout the day.

God, he had a headache. He rested his head in his hands for a moment, and then blew out the flickering candle. He was still fully dressed, right down to his shoes, but he lay down in the bed beside his wife, with one arm draped over her sleeping form, and his forehead just brushing against the back of her neck. He might have fallen asleep like that, had there not been a knock at the door downstairs.

He wouldn't have thought himself able to smile just then, but when he saw who it was at the door it happened quite easily, and something very like relief spread through him.

"Jo March, a sight for sore eyes, to be sure." Laurie took her arm, pulling her inside and closing the door after her.

"You aren't. You look as if you've just swallowed poison."

"Terribly flattered. Thank you."

Though she moved away from him ever so slightly, the look of concern on Jo’s face was the most welcoming Laurie he had seen all day.

"If you're looking to be flattered, you have a beautiful wife to do that for you, and no need for the likes of me."

Just like that, the smile was gone from Laurie’s face, and he looked at the staircase leading up to the bedroom where Amy slept, wondering if he was a complete brute for not being up there with her.

"Here," Laurie said, fighting to keep some normalcy in his tone, "Sit down. No, not over there, here on the sofa with me." When Jo actually complied and sat down close to him, he began to think that he really must look as bad as she had first claimed.

"What is it?" Jo asked. They were sitting so that their knees were nearly touching, and Laurie resisted the momentary impulse to move ever so slightly closer to her; her eyes were clear, her hands were folded calmly in her lap, and she was looking at him with that sincerity that was and would always be utterly disarming to him.

"Where's Amy?" was Jo’s second question, and this time Laurie had to resist the impulse to move away.

"She's upstairs. She's sleeping."

"So early?"

"She was sleepwalking again last night. I found her back by the river, like before. I had to carry her home -- she said something about Beth being a wolf, Jo, and you as well, if you can imagine that -- and then she fainted. She's been strange all day— alternately angry, and remorseful, and she keeps shivering as if it's no more than two degrees inside the house."

"It-- it was probably some strange dream, that you woke her from," Jo said softly, her brow creasing. "Surely you've called for the doctor?"

"Yes, and that's the worst of it," Laurie replied, trying not to sound dismal, and only half succeeding.

"What did he say?"

"It's not so much what he said, as what he saw."

"And what was that?" Jo asked.

"She has bite marks -- fang marks -- on her neck."

"What? How could it have happened?"

"A bat? A wolf? I don't know -- a spider with delusions of grandeur and a thoroughly macabre sense of humor? She doesn't remember a thing about it, and she insists she hasn't seen any animal. Dr. Bangs is worried that she might have met with a rabid dog, but such a creature would have had to of caused more damage than two little marks on an otherwise perfect neck."

"Oh Teddy, the growling!" Jo spat out before she could stop herself. She took his hand, hoping to comfort him in this way, seeing all too easily that her words had had the opposite effect.

"Yes… that."

"Did you hear it again when you came upon her last night?" Jo asked, in a tone that Laurie thought she had deliberately slowed, made softer. He shook his head.

"And you still haven't seen any creature…?" Jo continued.

"No," Was Laurie's decisive reply. "I'm as sure of that as Amy is. They don't even look like bite marks, exactly, unless some animal exists that is capable of sinking its teeth into a girl's neck with infinite care. It's more like a person stuck her with a pair of needles or…" He paused, noticing for the first time Jo's faintly horrified expression. Well, of course she was worried. Amy was, after all, her sister. He placed his hand on her shoulder. "You don't think it was a mad dog, do you?"

"I'll need to see for myself before I can be certain, but surely if there was a mad animal about the town, someone would have encountered it by now. Someone would know."

Laurie found that the way Jo spoke the word _surely_ , as though it were a plea or a prayer, suited him perfectly.

"At any rate, I don't think you can be sure about her health until she's left off the sleep walking for a few days, and you've seen how she bears up,” said Jo.

"You're right, of course,” Laurie replied.

For a time, the Laurie and Jo sat in companionable silence, Jo's hand still covering his. Just as Laurie was beginning to think that he felt at ease for the first time all day, Jo stood up, and drew away from him.

"Teddy, you should be with her right now, even if she is sleeping. I hate to think I'm taking up your attention when Amy might be… very ill indeed."

He took her hand again. "You're not. You're helping me to make sense of it."

"I think I ought to go home, and come back tomorrow, while Amy is awake. I'd do better to help her make sense of it, if I can."

Laurie let Jo's hand drop. "About that…"

"Yes?"

"I can't claim for one moment to understand her reasoning, or be in accord with it, but Amy… she told me she'd rather you stayed away until she's well. I'm sure she'll be better soon, or at least she'll change her mind."

Hurt flickered across Jo's face, only to replaced with an amiable and absolutely fake smile.

"In that case, I really must be going. I'll count on you to send word and keep me abreast of Amy's condition. I know I shall worry terribly if you don't."

"Jo…" Laurie grabbed her by the shoulders as she turned, too quickly, towards the door. "I'll come to see you myself tomorrow."

Jo never had the chance to answer, or to ponder the heat of Laurie's touch, as they were interrupted by a terrible shattering sound from upstairs


	5. Chapter 5

Amy blinked once, twice, three times, and then her eyes widened in silent terror as her vision adjusted to the dark. Another pair of eyes, too close, mirrored or perhaps mocked her own. The girl sat straddling Amy's chest, her hands wound up tightly in her golden curls, and though she was surprisingly light, Amy still found that she couldn't breathe.

"What are you?" Amy could only mouth the words. The girl laughed lightly, as a woman might, and the sound seemed to hang in the air, not nearly maniacal or terrifying enough. One of her hands trailed across Amy's face, tracing the line of her cheek and brow, and she looked down at her with a dull sort of interest. When she turned Amy's head, and brushed her hair away to better expose her neck, she did so with movements that were quick but not ungentle. When she leaned down and buried her face against her, the sensation had less in common with pain than it did with the sharp exhilaration of being immersed in cold water.

With disorienting rapidity it was over, and Amy was able to sit up, albeit shakily. The girl slid easily off of her, and sat cross-legged on the bed before her, her position and even the expression on her face exactly matching Amy's own. Something had quickened within Amy, as if the sleeping draught that had previously clouded her mind had burnt away in her veins, rendering the world around her clear, and clean, and startling.

"What are you?" Amy asked again.

"I'm nothing. A bit of dust in the moonlight,” whispered the girl, with surprising intimacy. Her face and eyes had become brighter and more menacing. She looked like a living creature, and Amy struggled to remember what she had looked like only moments before.

"How…"

"I don't know." The girl’s smile was serene. "I can be and do so many different things, I've given up thinking on it. Do you still want to call me Beth? You may, if it makes things easier for you."

Amy shook her head. She wanted to speak, but it was difficult to think in words, much less force her mouth to form them.

"Whatever it is they gave you to keep you from coming to me, it's dreadful. You would do better to pour it down the sink. You will do that for me, won't you?"

The barest hint of a nod.

"It will be very easy for you to do so. You will be unattended at some point tomorrow, no matter what else you do. And I give you leave to do whatever you please. Rave and scream, if you wish it. Your husband will still find his way into your sister's arms. Does that make you want to die?"

"No."

"They are, both of them, downstairs. Worrying over you, but that's only coincidental. So was the trick with the paintings. They conspired together for days on how to please you best, and it was never for one moment about you. What do you think of that? Remember, before you answer, that if only he were here, I would not be"

Amy opened her mouth and then closed it; her voice had left her. She was struck by the sudden urge to make the sign of the cross, but when she tried to move her arm, she found that it was entirely impossible. She knew now what had changed about the girl, since she had woken beneath her; the child's eyes, once a cruel parody of Beth's, were now Amy's own; At least they matched in shade and shape. Amy hoped that her gaze had never been so cold as the one this creature fixed upon her.

A scream began to fill Amy and, unable to escape her throat, it lodged itself deep within her soul.

"I like this -- watching you die. I wanted Beth so very much. I thought having her would satisfy me, but then nothing ever does. Everything is so very tedious and lacking in intrigue. It goes that way for years, sometimes." A soft sigh. "I took Beth too peacefully, but that was the only way I could do it. She isn't a creature of extremes. You very well might be. Her loss has left some sadness in its wake, but I would like for yours to be followed by a great discord."

"Please," Amy whispered, in a voice tremulous and unfamiliar to her own ears, "Have I any choice?"

The girl smiled slowly, and kissed Amy's neck. "None at all," She whispered, as she drew away. "Most of those that I've taken did choose me, but sometimes it is a matter of chance. You have been close to death before. Do you remember? The ground falling out from under you, the water filling your lungs…"

…Laurie, holding her more tightly and desperately than he ever had in their marriage bed. Yes. Amy remembered.

"Death does not take kindly to having His prey snatched from Him at the last moment. There is no need of an invitation between us, my dear, and no possibility of escape."

If she could have closed her eyes tightly just then, Amy would have; Indeed, if she could have so much as lifted a finger to stab herself through the chest, she would have, if only because she did not think she could look for another instant at the girl's face without sacrificing all claims to sanity, without all warmth seeping out of her life as it seemed to have already seeped out of her shivering body. Alas, whether from shock or sorcery, Amy's eyes were absolutely locked upon the girl's.

"When you are gone, they shall rut about on your grave like animals. It doesn't take so long, really, for propriety to be forgotten in extreme situations. Greater sins have been committed by much less impulsive people, over matters more consequential than this."

"Am I inconsequential then?" Amy said, surprised at the ease with which she asked it.

"Not to me. I promise I shall be much kinder to you once this stage of our game is over."

The girl rose to her knees, and kissed Amy's forehead with her cold lips. Then she was gone. For several minutes, Amy was very still, taking in breath with deep shudders and gasps. As soon as she could stand again she did, running to the window. It was open, and it had been closed before. The night outside was cold, silent, and wickedly bright with stars. Amy slammed the window shut with such force that the glass shattered against her.

******

For a split second after the sound, Laurie and Jo merely looked at each other, their eyes mutually wide. Then Laurie raced upwards towards the room he shared with Amy, taking the stairs two at a time. Jo was not far behind him as they burst into the room.

The scene, a compilation of blood and shattered glass, would have been a good opening for a sensation novel. Amy's eyes were squeezed shut, and there were jagged shards glittering in her hair, and around her bare feet. Her hands were streaked with red.

"Lord have mercy…" Jo whispered, but her voice was completely drowned out by Laurie ordering Amy not to move. He was the first to reach her.

"Don't move,” said again, brushing glass away from her hair and nightgown with hands that were shaky and uncertain. "My god Amy, what…"

"Where do you keep the bandages?" Jo asked.

"Bandages," Laurie repeated, in a dull tone that made Jo regret having asked at all. The house was new, Jo remembered belatedly, and it made perfect sense to think that neither Laurie nor Amy had yet considered certain practicalities.

"Never mind. Bring her over here."

Laurie's hands traveled once again over Amy's body, searching for any traces of glass upon her, and then he lifted her over to the bed where Jo was in the process of removing several pillows from their adorned and silken cases.

Amy opened her eyes, but it was unclear just how much she saw. Her skin was more than pale; in fact, it was verging on gray, and she shivered with cold, shock, or more likely both at once.

"You're here!" she gasped, reaching out to Jo, as her eyes became focused. At least she was speaking. Jo hoped, as she took hold of Amy's blood slicked hand, that that was a good sign.

"Yes, dear, I'm right here, and so is Laurie," Jo murmured, as she started to wrap the first pillow case around Amy's injured arm. She glanced up, thinking to tell Laurie to hold her still while she did her work with the makeshift bandages, but his wits had held up well, and he was already doing so.

Although Jo had seen and cared for many things during the long course of Beth's illness, such a lot of blood was entirely new to her. She did not shrink away from it, but she could not help but think she was doing the wrong thing, especially when Amy's eyes began to flicker closed, and her head started to loll dangerously.

"Jo." Jo's eyes darted up from Amy's bandaged arms to meet Laurie's. "There's wine in the cabinet downstairs. Won't you fetch it up here, and then go for the doctor?" Laurie's voice was serious, strained with the holding back of strong emotions that none of them had time for. In the scant starlight, he looked quite as pale as poor Amy.

Jo gave a nod, which Laurie could not have seen, as his attention was entirely taken up in whatever he was whispering in Amy's ear to try and rouse her. Somehow Jo managed to make it down the stairs, into the kitchen, back to Laurie and Amy's room, and down again in less than a minute without tripping over her skirts, or losing time in contemplation of the night's fearful events. It was only when she reached the door, and saw the smudge of red that her fingers left upon the knob, that she found herself frozen. A sickness twisted within Jo, which she only just managed to swallow back; she could feel the pound of her heartbeat through every inch of her body. She had to take several deep breaths before she could regain herself enough to wipe her soiled fingers against her skirt and race out into the night, resolving to return not only with the doctor, but with her mother as well.

****

Laurie could not help but find the silence unnerving after all of the commotion that had proceeded it. He had moved Amy to the guest bedroom, but even in the bright light and the absence of blood stains on the comforter, Laurie's body was tensed with a deep and pervading foreboding. Amy slept, but her breathing had been thready and uneven for some time, and her face was nearly as pale as the crisp white sheet she lay upon. Laurie sat on one side of her, his eyes fixed uselessly upon his hands, and Mrs. March sat across from him, watching Amy with careful anxiety.

Nobody spoke. Dr. Bangs, from his place in the corner of the room, looked grave and more than a little disheveled, having been dragged out in the middle of the night to attend his patient. He hadn't removed Jo's makeshift bandages, for fear of starting Amy bleeding anew. Laurie had always thought it a bad sign, when doctors could do no more for their patients than common untrained family members.

Jo was the only person in the room who was moving. She had confiscated Dr. Bangs’ medical encyclopedia some hours before, and she paced intermittently as she skimmed the heavy tome in search of any information or inspiration. There was something so serious and frantic about her face that Laurie found he could not look at her. Indeed, each time his ears caught the faint rustle of pages he was seized with the bitter wish that he had not been downstairs talking with her, but instead watching Amy as he should have been, when the dreadful event occurred.

"I hate this book,” Jo announced, when the first rays of early morning sunlight had begun to stream in through the window. "Whoever decided to arrange it like this is a hopeless idiot. Everything has the same symptoms, and the only solution it gives for half of it is to cut her open so she can bleed some more." Jo turned back to the first page of the book, with a frown of dissatisfaction. From the length of the volume, and the haphazard manner in which she flipped through it, Laurie found it hard to believe that she had taken in a single word.

"If you can't be bothered to read the confounded thing, then put it down. Or better yet, return it to the doctor you stole it from, and kindly allow him to do his job," Laurie snapped, after watching Jo open the book to a random page somewhere in the middle. His voice sounded much harsher than he'd meant it to. Surprised, Jo looked up at him as if he'd just struck her, before fixing her shining eyes even more doggedly and ever more uselessly upon the book. He realized that her hands were shaking, and buried his head in his own hands. He didn't cry, but took in several ragged breaths, feeling as though he very well might. A few minutes later he felt Jo sit down close beside him.

"She won't die," she said. Laurie glanced up. Jo was leaning over Amy, looking not at him, but at her mother.

Mrs. March smoothed the blankets over Amy's sleeping form. Was the scene reminiscent, Laurie wondered, of Beth's final descent into illness?

"We must pray and hope for her recovery," Mrs. March replied, and Laurie was surprised by just how strong and even her voice was; it did not match the dull tiredness of her eyes. "With God's grace it will come sooner than we can expect it."

"She must get better. There's no reason why she shouldn't. She's young, and strong, and she's never taken ill for long up until now. She wouldn't--" Jo paused, almost managing to force a smile. "She wouldn't dare to go now that she's just come back to us."

Jo looked down at the encyclopedia, which she had carried to the bed with her. It was closed now, but she held it tightly, as if it were the only thing between them and certain doom. Laurie regretted having yelled at her earlier; she was Jo, after all, and he had never known her to be still and accepting in the face of crisis. She always needed to take some action against it, no matter how futile that action might be. Even in her stillness there was a sense of movement and desperation about her, and Laurie found that he was intensely grateful for it, if only because it was something he was familiar with.

At length, Mrs. March, quite possibly having the same thought as him, spoke: "Jo, why don't you go downstairs and fix us some tea."

"Perhaps I should also bring something for Amy to eat, once she wakes? She can't get stronger if she hasn't got anything in her."

Mrs. March deemed Jo's idea "very sensible", and suggested that she might also run out and inform Meg of what was happening when she was finished. Jo kissed her mother on the cheek, and paused to gently squeeze Laurie's shoulder as she was getting up to leave the room. She stopped in the doorway and looked at the encyclopedia as if not knowing quite what to do with it, and then turned back and handed it to Laurie before running downstairs. Laurie waited until she had gone before returning the book to Doctor Bangs, and letting him know that he was free to go, if there was nothing more he could do for Amy.

"Just how are you holding up under all of this, my dear?" Mrs March asked softly, gesturing that Laurie should sit down next to her. He did, and she took her hand in his, with more affection than he thought he could bare without breaking down completely.

"Well enough," he said in a voice that _would_ shake, despite his efforts to sound steady and strong as he knew he must be. "I very much intend for us all to survive this -- come through it with flying colors, in fact."

"And I know you'll do every thing you can to make sure that happens," Mrs. March replied.

"I only wish I knew exactly what I must do, so I could put it into action without delay."

"Be with her, with your whole heart,” Mrs. March whispered. Laurie could see tears, unshed but shining in her eyes. "Love her."

Laurie wrapped his arms around Mrs. March, affection coming easily to him, as it always had with all of the Marches.

"Love her," Laurie repeated. "If that's the only task ahead of me, then this ordeal will be far easier than I'd expected."

\-----

Two days later, and Amy felt neither better, nor particularly worse. She felt listless, and disdainful of both food and excessive company, but she found that she could tolerate both. Though she had a strong suspicion that her strange dreams had something to do with her current state, no amount of effort could bring them to her waking mind. If she ceased to concentrate, sometimes she was plagued with images of eyes, and teeth… of a girlish woman who seemed to change, materialize, and change again. More often, and particularly when Amy was trying to explain them, these images eluded her. All that she could tell Laurie and Marmee was that she had terrible nightmares, and that she could not remember them.

Three days later, and Amy wondered when the anger, and fear, and ever present cold would overcome her completely. It seemed to her that she had screamed at Jo that she never wished to see her again, that she had bit Laurie hard enough to draw blood when he attempted to silence her. She could not eat. Food tasted vile, and any attempt at taking it caused her stomach to empty very much against her will.

Four days later, and Amy was not sure that she had any will left.

It was early morning. She was awake. Laurie had been stroking her hair for some time, and though his hands were large and warm, she couldn't help but think them every bit as strange and distracting as the hands that sometimes reached out for her in… in her dreams, perhaps, if not some distant and frightening memory. They were in bed, and she was resting against his chest. She could hear Marmee's slow breath from the chair in the corner of the room, where she had fallen asleep. She wanted to look over at her, but she was behind them, and movement tended to make Amy's head pound.

"I wish I'd been able to see Beth one last time." It wasn't the first time Amy had said it. In fact, she was sure she and Laurie had been having this conversation, on and off, for hours now. It was difficult to remain aware of what had been said, what had not been said, and what, by necessity, must remain unsaid.

"Don't," Laurie whispered.

"Don't what?"

"Don't say again that you wish God had taken Jo instead of her. Don't say that she is waiting for you, and you'll go to her soon. Don't tell me that she whispers terrible things to you whenever you close your eyes." Laurie's voice, though not ungentle, was strained and painful to listen to. "Wish her back, if you must but…"

"Wishing her back would be the worst thing of all. Will you wish for me back, after I've gone?"

Laurie's arms tightened around her.

"Yes, unless you promise to put off any leave taking until we're both old and grey. Even then…"

Laurie trailed off, his lips finding the top of her head, her neck, her cheek.

"Do you love me?" Amy asked, just as Laurie was leaning in to kiss her lips.

"Yes," he answered, in a voice so low and pained that Amy could not help but believe him. She sat up, with an energy that she hadn't felt since the worst stage of her illness, when she had been mad and insatiable.

"Then there might be a chance," she said, clutching his arm so tightly that it may well have pained him. "If I can just tell her… If I can make her believe me, then…"

"Make who believe you?" Laurie asked. He looked as if he'd like to shake her.

"Beth!"

Laurie made no answer. His hand passed over his eyes.

"You should lie down, dearest," Laurie said finally. "You need to…" Here his voice trailed off. Was it possible that he didn't know what she needed?

"Do you love me?" She asked again, as he eased her down against the pillows.

Two days later, six days after the first signs of her illness, Amy was dead.


	6. Chapter 6

Never in her life had Meg given so much thought to whether or not she truly knew the Laurence boy. She had always thought him kind, funny, and a very suitable friend and brother. He hadn't given her any reason to question his mind or his motivations. As a romantic young girl, she had suspected a special attachment between Laurie and Jo, something that went beyond mere camaraderie, and would blossom into love, even with all of Jo's oddities. As a woman, more sensible but not altogether cured of her romantic notions, Meg had been sure that Amy and Laurie both loved and understood each other as only husband and wife could. Now, though only a few months had passed between the excitement of Amy and Laurie's triumphant return from Europe, and the strange illness which took dear Amy's life, Meg felt that she had aged years in the span of a few days, and that no sense of romance would allow her to understand and help Laurie as she knew she must.

And with Laurie standing in her doorway, looking too much as though the world might swallow him up the moment he left, Meg had a difficult task ahead of her.

"Won't you stay?" Meg asked, her tone hesitant as she tried to think of something that would keep Laurie from trekking through the night to his empty home, for even a little while longer. "The children were so happy when I told them you were coming tonight. Demi especially. He always asks about his Uncle Laurie…"

"Does he?" Laurie asked with the hollowness Meg had come to expect since Amy's passing. "That's very kind of him, but…"

"John is putting them to bed right now, of course. Won't you come inside and help me prepare a bit of coffee? Don't stand in the doorway letting in cold air like that."

Once, Meg would have been surprised when Laurie complied with neither argument nor witticism, but he had been quicker than usual to obey as of late. It was unfair, really, to think him unmanageable. He had behaved exquisitely at the funereal, shedding about as many tears as could be considered appropriate, and comforting them all with rousing stories of how Amy had taken Paris by storm. He had sent flowers to both Marmee and Jo, but kept a respectable distance when Jo refused to see him for more than a minute or two at a stretch. He'd accepted most of Meg and John's dining invitations, and though his mannerisms had been polished and polite, Meg could not miss the way that his hands sometimes shook, the occasional and quickly buried roughness that came into his voice, or the way his dark eyes could flash wild for a moment, before settling back into the safe dullness of sorrow. Meg couldn't miss that, though the children rushed him whenever he walked through the door in search of the sweets which he never neglected to bring for them, they had otherwise gained an uncharacteristic shyness around him.

"Would you boil the water for the coffee?" Meg asked, once they were inside her kitchen.

"All right."

Meg bit her lip as she looked through the drawers for the cake she had baked and hidden away from little hands that would become sticky chocolaty messes, if given the chance. She spent a little too long in her searching, half deliberately, opening cupboards that she knew to be filled with cups and plates, painfully cognizant that when she turned back to Laurie there would be, if not a silence, a vast _something_ which needed filling.

"Goodness!" she said after she had finally retrieved the cake. When she paused again, it was not so much to think of what to say, as to wonder when she had become a person who could exclaim over a dessert while in the midst of a great personal tragedy. "There are finger prints on it! Look!" She showed Laurie the small smudge in the frosting, which he examined with about as much interest as could be expected. "I don't know how they manage it. They can't have reached it on their own."

Laurie laughed. Meg had forced him into it, hadn't she? Laughter was the only decent response.

"Perhaps they had help. Perhaps Jo…"

"Jo hasn't been over here," Meg said, sounding a bit hollow herself. For a long moment she gazed out the window, and so she didn't catch Laurie's awakened expression until she had already began to babble on, with forced cheer: "It would be just like her, of course, to lead them off into anarchy."

How strangely he was looking at her! He was positively staring, and worse still, Meg found that she couldn't break gaze. Laurie wasn't saying a word, and Meg couldn't help the fear that if she didn't do something to break scene, they would both be stuck forever in the uncomfortable silence which surrounded them currently.

"She puts such stock in being their playmate that at times it can seem like there are three children about the house!" Meg finished feebly.

"Is that so?" Laurie asked. He seemed deep in thought, his hands tightly clenched together at his sides.

Meg nodded. She stood there before him, holding the cake, and feeling like a perfect idiot for not being able to lead the conversation further than that, and into some pleasant topic that would comfort and distract.

"I don't wonder at it," Laurie said, just as the lull in the conversation was beginning to grow too long. "She's never understood the adult world, has she? She hasn't, not for all that she thinks that she can make a grown-up of herself by being still and solemn. She's always been afraid, always wanted to lock herself up in that little attic… always wanted the world to be the way she imagines it, instead of being so --"

"Laurie..." Meg did her best to push a note of warning into her voice, when she merely felt bewildered. Amy was dead. Amy was gone from them forever, never to be seen again, and here was Laurie, talking about Jo in such a thoroughly strange way, without any real energy in his voice perhaps, but with something akin to passion animating his bitter features. Meg put down her cake, and put her hand on his arm.

"Do you think that I still love Jo?" Laurie spat, causing Meg to pull back.

If she had been the heroine of a novel, Meg knew, she would be able to divine the thoughts of man, woman, or beast, simply by staring into their eyes, or observing the expression of their face and body. And though she had often thought she had a knack with such tricks when it came to her own husband and children, looking carefully at Laurie only served to make her wish that he wouldn't look back at her. If anything, Laurie's expression was more confusing than his words, and the only firm knowledge Meg was left with was that she did not like either.

"I think," she began carefully, "that you're overwrought, and I don't wonder as to why. You've been alone too much since Amy… left us. It can't be good for you!"

A sizzling sound made Meg jump, as if Laurie's tenseness had seeped into her. The coffee water had boiled over, and was now hissing down the sides of the iron stove.

"I don't think you love Jo as Amy claimed you did towards the end," she said, turning back to the stove, and reaching for the thick towel which hung above it. "We all care too much for you and Jo both to think anything bad of you."

"Good,” Laurie replied, with such vehemence that Meg dropped her towel in surprise. "Because I don't love her, and I doubt I ever have. Could you imagine what would have happened if we'd run off and gotten married? We'd have killed --- I never, never compared Amy to her in the end, never --- none of those things, none of the things that Amy said during her madness, were true."

Another stream of scalding water escaped down the stove, and unthinkingly, Meg reached out for the pot, only to draw back with a little shriek, bumping soundly into Laurie in the process.

Laurie was not so quick to react as he might have been, but eventually he put his hands on her shoulders, and Meg felt him behind her, as he let out a long breath.

"Let me see," he said, after a pause in which Meg could feel him relax his hold on her, which she only realized belatedly had been too tight. He sounded kinder now, but he also sounded defeated. He took hold of Meg's hand, bringing it so her burnt fingers were at eye level. Meg, for her part, couldn't help the blur of tears, or the catch of her throat. "It doesn't look so bad. I'll get some cold water, and you'll be good as new."

"It isn't that…" Meg wiped at her eyes with her free hand, feeling quite silly as Laurie held too tightly on to the other.

"Tell me.” 

Meg swallowed hard. She couldn't start sobbing now. That would have to wait, until later that night, when she was alone with John and his endless patience.

"It's nothing,” she whispered.

"No, it isn't." Laurie let go of her burnt hand. "It's me, isn't it Meg? God, I'm…"

Meg shook her head, a little frantically.

"It isn't. Oh, it isn't! I only miss Amy. It should never have happened this way."

Laurie may well have taken her in his arms at that point, but Meg kept him from it with a frenzied gesture towards the still burning stove. He picked up the towel she had dropped, and used it to remove the offending pot.

"I suppose we won't be having coffee tonight." Meg forced a smile that Laurie was not even looking at her to see.

"It doesn't matter. I'm sorry Meg. I'm so very sorry. Truly."

Meg merely watched him.

"The last week has been difficult for me," he continued, "for all of us, naturally."

"I only wish that you wouldn't speak of the things Amy said, when she was too ill to know better," Meg said, still not looking at Laurie. "She wasn't herself at that point, and I know she wouldn't care to be remembered that way. It would be better to pretend that she left this world as gently as our dear Beth."

"Of course. I only needed you to know that I never loved her -- Jo, I mean," said Laurie. "But Meg, please, I need to see her. I have to talk to Jo. Can't you tell me what I have to do to get to her?"

"Oh Laurie," cried Meg. "I've been such a useless fool with you. I'm sorry. Jo asked me to watch over you especially, and I've made such a mess of it."

"Jo asked you to watch me?"

Meg nodded. Laurie looked rather as if he might like to break something.

"Will you talk to her for me?"

Meg nodded again.

"In that case, I thank you, but I really must bid you goodnight."

\----------------------------

It was difficult for Jo to think that she would never see Amy again. Even in her absence, she didn't seem so terribly, entirely, irrevocably gone as Beth did. If Jo allowed herself, she could almost believe that Amy was still making her way through Europe, a golden haired figure in some far off carriage, eager for a chance to paint the pretty scenes that stretched out before her, wondering perhaps how she would describe it all for her mother and sisters back home. 

The image was so clear, yet it didn't exactly hold up, because the memory of lowering Amy's coffin into the earth still shone with nightmarish prominence in Jo's mind, and was too much intertwined with the jumble of other images that Jo wanted more than anything to keep at bay.

It was now that point, minutes before dawn, when night was just starting to become morning. The sky had paled to so that the stars were no longer visible, but the bright colors of the rising sun had not yet broken out over the horizon. The first hints of birdsong were tentative and far away, and Jo sat cross-legged on her bed, having barely slept at all, wishing the day would hurry up and come so that she could rise and help prepare breakfast.

Jo was awake, it was neither night nor day, and she knew that Amy was dead, and she knew what death looked like. She knew, for example, how the body could become wasted, and the face thin out, so that it looked like there was nothing left of a person but a pair of dim and staring eyes. She knew what it felt like to sit in a room and watch, thinking that every hitch in in the dying's throat marked their final breath, only to be surprised when it finally happened. She knew that the muscles in the face of a human corpse twitched at intervals for a few minutes after the heart ceased to beat, much like the way an insect's limbs could move even after its body had been firmly crushed.

She had seen it first with Beth, and then with Amy, but with Beth she hadn't thought about it so much. With Amy, her illness had struck so suddenly, and wrought its changes in such a rapid and violent manner, that it was all Jo could think about. She hadn't expected Amy to die, hadn't been able to brace herself for it. Right up to the last minute before Amy's death, Jo had held onto the hope that her youngest sister would recover after all. Now, it was Amy's last moments that Jo could not get her mind off of, even as they juxtaposed oddly against the images that Jo most wanted to hold onto, of Amy happy and far away in Europe, of Amy happy and newly married, and finally back from her long journey, only a two mile walk away from home.

Later that day, Jo knew that she would sit in the kitchen with her mother and father, drinking tea or not drinking it, talking or not talking; it made no difference. With her family the silence was as companionable and comforting as the longest conversations, even in the midst of this latest sorrow. Perhaps Marmee would tell Jo to go up to the garret and write, and perhaps Jo would. And, she knew, if she wrote of death, it would be the pretty, sanitized version of popular novels, with bittersweet parting words, and the peaceful closing of eyes -- merely sleep, without that crucial moment where the dreamer must wake.

Later Jo opened her eyes, wincing at how bright the sun was, even through her half closed curtains. Marmee was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands folded peacefully in her lap.

"Mercy, is it as late as it looks?" Jo asked, sitting up in a quick way that made Marmee smile.

"It's nearly afternoon, but you looked as though you needed your rest."

"Not when my rest takes up half the day for no real reason. Really, if you weren't the mother, and I the daughter, I'd have to scold you for letting me be such a lazy-bones."

Marmee only smiled and pushed Jo's hair away from her face, and not for the first time Jo observed just how very old she looked lately, and strangely brittle as well.

"If I didn't have it in my mind to indulge you, dear, I could scold you for throwing a pillow at me when I tried to wake you for breakfast. Or for staying up half the night, instead of finding me and telling me what was on your mind, or am I wrong about that?"

Jo very much wanted to tell her that she was wrong, but as she knew that her mother would see through any pretense, she merely bit her lip and shook her head. When she looked at Marmee, she was watching her carefully, and though Jo knew her mother to be strong, she couldn't help but think she ought to be a little selfish, and not try and take on another's burden, while bearing that of losing two children whom she had given the best of her life to raising.

"Trust me to tell you when I know myself," Jo said, drawing back just a little bit. "Writer or no, right now the only thoughts I can put into words are just how good you've been to me, and how much I love both you and father. You know that I'll never leave you, don't you?"

"I know that you shall always be a good and attentive daughter," Marmee replied, "but I'd rather you didn't think that means you must give up your dreams for the sake of looking after us."

"I don't…" Jo started, but Marmee took hold of both her hands.

"I've never wanted anything more than for you and your sisters to find happiness, and to live your lives, and that is what you must do. If you are ever given a chance to see the world, I hope that you will take it, rather than staying tied to home."

Jo wanted to promise Marmee that of course she would go, but instead she somehow ended up hanging her head as if ashamed, or else just very tired. She would do everything she was ever meant to, and she would thrive, but at that moment she could not imagine how she would go about it, or even be sure that she still wanted the same things that she had wanted back in the days when she had first begun to erect castles in the air.

"I'll do my best," Jo promised. Her smile wasn't forced, but it was wistful. "I'm not sure how to make heads or tails of things right now, but I'll blunder through as I always do, and come out on top of it one of these days."

Jo and Marmee sat in silence for a time, with an ease which Jo was thankful for.

"There's still something on your mind," Marmee whispered, and everything in her demeanor seemed an invitation for Jo to lean her head against her shoulder, and unload her troubles, before they could be allowed to fester and become something worse inside of her. Indeed, she would have done just that, if there had been a way to talk about the final slackening of Amy's skin, or the whispered words that nobody had been able to make out, without dragging her mother right back into the moment with her.

"Is it about Laurie?" Marmee asked.

Jo looked up, surprised . As a child it had seemed to her that her mother could read her mind, and even as an adult Marmee had always been uncommonly good at guessing her thoughts, and molding them into something better than they were on their own. And so, it came as a small shock to have her mother come to the wrong conclusion entirely.

"No,” Jo said. Of course she hadn't been thinking of Laurie.

Marmee nodded, accepting.

"He came by twice this morning, looking for you. I told him that you were in bed. I believe he is waiting for you at his Grandfather's house."

Jo jumped to her feet and pulled open the curtains, half expecting to find Laurie standing out in the grass below her window. He wasn't, but the effect was the same. Laurie was close by, heedless of Amy’s final wishes that he keep his distance from now on. 

"Do you think that I ought to see him?" Jo asked.

"I expect he's rather bewildered as to why you don't."

"He ought to know. The last coherent thing Amy told me was to stay away from him. He heard it as well as I did."

Mrs. March was silent, allowing Jo to continue as she wished, and Jo found in the topic of Laurie a safe way to express her worries that didn't involve venturing into the macabre.

"I never thought that I'd find myself wishing I'd never met my best friend," Jo said with a sigh, "or at least that Amy had met him first and only brought him into my life as some new brother-in-law to get used to. Surely then she would not have thought such things about the two of us, when she…"

Marmee put out her hand to silence Jo.

"Her illness was such that she would have thought of mad and terrible things, no matter what the case. If it had not been you and Laurie, it would have been something else."

"But the fact is, it _was_ me and Laurie. No changing that. Even as… absolutely unfounded as it was. Truly, do you think I ought to see him?"

"That's something you must decide for yourself."

Jo had already reached for her brush, and she felt she needed to dress and be out of her room, even if it was only to take refuge in the kitchen or her attic. Even, alternately, if it was to head over to the old Laurence house.

"I only want to make sure he isn't doing too badly," Jo reasoned aloud. "And then I'll set him straight as to how things must be from now on, and be through with it."

"And how must things be for now on?" Marmee asked, glancing out the window towards the house where she knew that Laurie was waiting.

"If only I knew! I suppose we must resolve to go our separate ways, and carry on the best we can."

\-------


	7. Chapter 7

After two trips to the March home, Laurie gave up on waiting patiently for Jo to come and see him; he didn't have anything in particular that needed to be accomplished that day, and so he considered it completely within his rights to give up on talking business with his grandfather, and pace through the house as he saw fit. When he knocked on the door a third time, and was only greeted by Mrs. March's kind face, and her assurances that she would tell Jo of his visit as soon as she woke up, he gave himself full leave to indulge any ideas of Jo's cowardice or selfishness that took hold in his mind. He had never known her to sleep till noon, and difficult as it was to imagine any purposeful deceit on the part Marmee, Laurie didn't doubt that Jo avoided him by willful design. Even if she was still in bed, he thought that somebody really ought to rouse her for her own benefit, lest excessive rest have an ill effect upon her.

It was late afternoon when Jo finally swung open the gate that separated her garden from that of the Laurence mansion. Years ago she would have jumped the barrier, instead of walking so solemnly through it. Laurie was standing outside waiting for her, having been contemplating a fourth trip to her house, to drag her out of bed if necessary. Even after several hours of letting his anger built, he found that it fell uncharacteristically flat when finally faced with her, for she hastened her step upon seeing him, and reached out to grasp his hands as soon as she was close enough.

"I didn't think you would come," he said. It was the first thing that came to mind. Jo looked sad, and colorless, and ordinary, and yet Laurie felt that just seeing her had caused a painful tightness within in him to subside into something a little more bearable.

"I wasn't planning on it," Jo answered, with a grim smile, "but seeing as I'm here, you'd better tell me everything that's on your mind, and I'll tell you what's on mine, and we'll go on from there." She was standing particularly straight, her shoulders squared, and her expression set, yet she ran her thumb against the back of his hand in a nervous way, and her speech was just the slightest bit quicker than usual.

"You talk almost as if you've already scripted out this meeting in your head," Laurie said, and he had a sinking suspicion that she very well might have, and not with an outcome that he would like. With Jo it seemed the longer he gave her to mull over something, the more likely she was to come up with some terrible solution that defied all logic except for her own. Their joined hands hung awkwardly between them.

"I wish this were scripted," Jo said, "but real people and events aren't nearly predictable enough. If I could write our our dialogues and destinies as though for characters in a story, I'd make everything a great deal easier for us. Only, that's a wicked idea. We must believe that there's a reason our path runs the way it does."

"You can't think that after all that's happened recently,” said Laurie.

 

"I don't know," Jo admitted, in a despairing tone which might have roused his fullest affection, had been she not chosen that moment to let go of his hand, and look back towards her home as if contemplating escape.

"Jo…" The name stuck in his throat, for it seemed all too likely to him that she would turn him away if he dared to tell her how much he had missed her. The syllable hung discordantly between them, as she stood watching him with her sharp grey eyes. Laurie wondered if she actually saw and understood half so much as she imagined she did, and what she thought of it.

"Let’s go back to my house," Jo said. "Marmee will like to see you."

"I've already seen your mother today, Jo. I came to talk to you," Laurie replied. "If you're only planning on pawning me off on your family, you shouldn't have come at all."

"We can go up to the attic."

"You've barely left your attic since Amy… departed."

"That isn't so. I've been out plenty, and I haven't been idle."

"But you haven't been to see me."

Laurie was surprised that Jo did not throw some insult his way at this point. She looked as if she might, but then she took a deep breath, and said in a voice that was more tired than angry, "Just come with me, please?"

Neither Jo nor Laurie spoke as she led him into her house, and up a set of familiar steps. Jo gestured that Laurie should take a seat on the well-worn couch, which he did, only to have her pull up the wooden stool from her writing desk and take a seat across from him, apparently unconscious of the incredulous look he shot her.

"It's the things Amy said about us, isn't it Jo?” Laurie said, his eyes fixed on the stool, and the empty expanse of floor that separated them.

"Oh, don't talk about those just yet! We will, soon enough, but not yet."

Laurie's sigh came out rather more like a groan, and he leaned back deeply against the couch, heedless of Jo's piercing gaze. He was so tired, and wanted to have it out, but it seemed that Jo would have no part in it, and Laurie knew from experience that if he pushed her too hard and too quickly, things would only be all the worse for him.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed. Jo rested her hands on her knees and sat with a statue like stillness which did not suit her in the least. Laurie found that he did not like to look at her, and shut his eyes as if sleeping, as if rest could come easily to him again.

"You ought to speak first," Jo said. "You're the one who came looking for me, after all."

"I tried, and you told me not to."

"Oh,” was her only response.

"Look at us," Laurie said, with a derisive gesture at the distance between them. "We're both falling apart."

"I'm not, and you'd better avoid it if you can." Jo’s face was tensed in a way that Laurie knew meant she felt terrible, and refused to admit it, most of all to herself.

Another long silence passed, in which Laurie was vaguely aware that he was making Jo uncomfortable, and wondered if it would be his lot to do that to people from that point on. He knew that he had made Meg nervous, and that his grandfather was near sick with worry for him, and now he was sitting with Jo, the one person living who knew him better than all others, and she could barely say a word to him.

"There's no sense in any of this,” Jo said. "I want to help you, I really do, but nothing I say will make things any better. Amy wished for us to keep away from each other, and maybe it's best we get the parting over with."

"Don't say that," Laurie said so desperately that Jo didn't say anything else, but looked miserable, as if she'd rather like to take it all back. All things considered, Laurie thought that a good sign.

"Listen Jo," he said, leaning in closer to her. "Amy was out of her mind at the end, and we can't go putting stock in the things that she said. If you ask me to leave now, it will be like… well, it will be as though you're agreeing with her."

"No, it will be as if we're respecting her wishes."

"But she wouldn't have wished for either of us to be lonely or unhappy! You can't possibly think that of her."

"I only think that we must have done something to cause us to fixate upon us so," Jo whispered, as ashamed as Laurie had ever seen her. "Of course we would have never, never gone and done… those things that she accused us of, but those thoughts can't have sprung into her mind by magic. I was spending too much time with you, when I should have let you both alone."

How Laurie wanted to bridge the gap between Jo and himself! She was frowning in such a way as to drive him to distraction, and looked almost tired enough for him to believe that she might let him pull her into his arms, allow him to comfort her and at last talk some sense into her. He wasn't sure what kept him from moving. Surely it wasn't the memory of Amy, who free of her illness and the madness that had colored her last hours, safe at last in whatever heaven she had found, would not wish for anything more than for her loved ones to find solace.

"You mustn't think that," Laurie said slowly, searching for the words. "You have no idea how Amy missed you while we were away in Europe. She wanted to see you every bit as much as I did before…"

"But you're not understanding me here," Jo said in a low tone. "If we hadn't done something to cause it, Amy may have still become ill, but she would have had to go mad over a different thing entirely. She could have… Oh, I don't know, raved over the trials of crossing the sea, or about Beth passing on before she could come home to her, and it would have been bad, but not so terrible as it was. At least-- at least then she wouldn't have felt the very people caring for her were the ones who meant to hurt her the most."

Jo's eyes were shining now, unshed tears adding an intensity to her expression that was more than enough to let Laurie know that the time for soft words and meaningless comforts had passed. If he had not known that any attempt merely to soothe would be futile, he may have tried it. As things were, he thought it best to say whatever truths would get Jo’s attention, and allow them to go on. He only prayed that Amy would forgive him.

"She was jealous of you Jo," Laurie said, careful not to allow his voice to become ragged and as harsh as the words themselves. "That was always a part of it. She fell through the ice for you, and would have done so a thousand times over. It's not that you did anything. It's only that different as the two of you are…" And here he had to swallow hard, before continuing, "As different as you were, you were always the one that she compared herself to. I think she worried that she would never achieve half so much as you in the end."

Laurie took a breath, wanting to continue, but wondering if perhaps he had too much to say, or too much for Jo to listen to just yet. She looked paler than he wanted her to, as though she were ill, but she did not look fragile. Her eyes were as sharp as ever, and fixed upon him in such a way that Laurie imagined she would at least listen to and think about all he had to say. She'd always given him at least that much.

"I'm not sure that she would have ever agreed to marry me, if you hadn't been the one to find me first,” Laurie finished, his voice low as if out of worry that if he didn't whisper, the words would gather power enough even to reach the ears of the dead.

Jo's face colored, and Laurie could see that she sat a little straighter, taking only a few moments to gather strength for her rebuttal.

"Don't think that!" Jo didn't sound as though Laurie had upset her, but rather as though she meant to soothe him. "Even if I'd never been born, she would have found her way to you eventually. You two suited too well for it to have been otherwise. You merely would have reached each other by a smoother path."

"And she still would have died in the end,” Laurie said darkly, before he could catch himself. Jo shuddered visibly at his words, and he wondered at once if her reserve were not quite as strong as he had supposed only moments earlier. He felt as if he'd struck her, or done some other dreadful thing.

"Jo, come here, dear,” Laurie said. She did not budge from her seat, but brushed her hand across her eyes, before resting it on her lap, folding whatever strong emotion had threatened to escape carefully up within in her for the time being. Still, Jo had never been able to hide much, and she only succeeded in appearing composed but singularly grim.

"Listen, Jo," Laurie continued, as if he were not infuriated with her (and really, when he considered it, it wasn't the most important part of him that was), "If I hadn't met you first, I wouldn't have been half good enough for Amy. You're the one who brought me into your family, and made me something worth her time. Think only that the happiness we… we had… however brief it was, rests squarely on your shoulders, and know that whatever went wrong after, Amy is with Beth and with God now."

Still, Jo didn't speak. Her face had fixed itself into a single expression, and Laurie allowed her the silence. When it came right down to it, even if he thought that they might help her, he didn't want to be the one to bring her to tears that she was not ready for.

That is why, when Laurie finally spoke, his own voice caught him off guard.

"I didn't do near enough for her in the end."

Jo looked up at him quickly. "Oh, that's not a compliment at all, to say that you didn't after telling me I made you suitable for the task in the first place,” she said in a thready little voice that shook and didn't sound much like her own. 

Laurie smiled, nonetheless, or at least he tried to. He rested his head in his hands, against the painful pressure that was burning behind his eyes.

A moment later and he felt Jo settle down next to him. When he looked up, it was almost as if he were the one that were breaking, and not her.

"I should have been able to stop her from wandering out of the house a second time," Laurie said, though his throat was painfully tight. He felt Jo lean into him ever so slightly, and place her hand on his back. "She needed me to protect her, and I failed thrice over."

Laurie pulled Jo carefully into his arms, needing to, even as he knew that Amy -- or at least that damned and twisted shadow of Amy that hadn't really been Amy at all -- would have screamed to see it; it was enough that he didn't kiss the top of her head, though he rested his face against her hair, letting fall the one or two treacherous tears that he couldn't help.

"I don't want you to leave me,” Laurie said, when at last he could speak.

The world seemed to still, as though it --what was left of it-- might yet fall apart around them, leaving Laurie alone with neither wife, nor sister, nor friend who could tolerate him. It was only when Jo whispered "I won't" that Laurie could breathe again.


	8. Chapter 8

A month passed, and six residents of Concord died with the marks upon their necks. The first three, as far as Jo knew, had gone much the way Amy had, after a few days of madness and quick deterioration. A third had lingered for fourteen days, and had even seemed to improve, before quietly succumbing to the illness. The most disturbing, and therefore the most talked about (short of Amy, who had the singular distinction starting it all), was a pair of young lovers who had been found beside the very river where Amy had used to wander, their necks, wrists, and chests torn to pieces.

Jo could not speak about the rising death toll. The closest she came was telling Laurie, one day, that the people who plagued her with questions about Amy every time she ventured into town were "mindless vultures". And it was true that they were, that most people were. Taking all things into consideration, Jo would not have blamed them for their fear, but more often than not, after a few careful words, it would become clear that they were curious, and even morbidly enthralled by the strange happenings; that, Jo could not endure, not when the unfolding mystery had claimed so many victims.

Yet somehow, even with all that was happening around Jo, the sun managed to shine with deceptive brightness. 

Laurie sat across from Jo on the floor of her attic, the remnants of their lunch spread out between them. Earlier, he had pulled open the curtains, wondering aloud at why they had been closed in the first place. A warm patch of light surrounded them where they sat, and it was almost enough to make Jo believe that they were safe and happy, that their family was intact, and people were not dying around them. It was enough to make Jo feel calm and lazy, and lean back against the base of the couch, as she flipped through Laurie's business figures, which had been abandoned on the ground earlier that afternoon.

"I meant to scold you for always bringing these over here, then not getting a thing done on them," she Jo, "but they're dull as bones."

Laurie laughed, not heartily as he once had, and the sound settled like a rock in the pit of Jo's stomach. Though his tall form was languid and relaxed, Jo could not help but feel that of late he had been constantly on the edge of something she did not want to think about -- something which wrought dark circles under his eyes, and made his clothes fit more loosely than they were supposed to, and which drew them together nearly every afternoon.

"Now you know why Amy had to work so to keep me on top of them," he said, taking the ledgers from Jo, smoothing them absently, and then returning them to their rightful spot on the ground. Jo frowned, and by the time she realized just how closely Laurie was watching her, it was too late to change her expression. His eyes caught hers before he continued, his voice just a little bit lighter for her sake. "I swear, Jo, one of these days I'm going to quit altogether. I'm not beast of business. I'll run off, compose some truly abominable operetta, and have a good laugh over it!"

"You should," Jo said. "But don't go so far as to waste yourself on the symphonic equivalent of a penny-dreadful, when you know perfectly well you can do better." Laurie’s smile broadened in a way that was rare nowadays, and which always made Jo thankful.

"You could pursue the more exciting part of the business," Jo continued. "I know you care nothing for tea and spices, but imagine setting sail for India! Think how much you'd see! You could stay there for a few years! better yet, you could do a tour of the whole orient! You'd do all manner of glorious things, and it will give you such inspiration for your music, that you wouldn't be able to help but become famous after you'd returned."

Laurie did not look especially excited, but Jo had had quite a bit of time to think this through, and so she carried on, undaunted.

"Just think! There would be new things and people to amuse you at every turn. It couldn't help but draw you out, and surely it would make this whole mess with mathematics at least a little less horrible."

Laurie watched Jo closely, as if trying to divine whether she was spinning a tale for his amusement, or truly trying to convince him to travel half a world away. Apparently he decided on the later, for his expression faltered just enough to make Jo feel vaguely guilty.

"Trying to exile me to India, Jo?" he asked. "Who will bother you to get enough sleep if I do run off? You need me more than you care to admit."

"You're the one with the raccoon circles under your eyes, sir."

"You're the one who lay snoring on the couch for nearly an hour yesterday, the moment I stopped entertaining you to look over your manuscripts."

Jo colored, but refused to allow herself to become distracted in wondering whether or not she had been snoring, and if so, how loudly.

"You could go off on your ship and we could send each other long letters!"

When Laurie persisted in looking unconvinced, Jo added, in her most serious tone, "At least then you would be safe from all the goings on here."

Laurie didn't answer, but this in itself was a more encouraging sign than the outright refusal that Jo had expected.

"Oh, won't you do as I say, just this once?" Jo begged, though she had only the barest hope of him listening to reason. "You've already had a close exposure to the illness. You don't look well at all, and we've no way of knowing for sure how and why it strikes as it does. You'd do better to get away, Teddy, truly."

Jo kept her eyes steadily upon Laurie, and she had to wait for his answer so long that she nearly managed to convince herself that it would not come at all.

"I'd be happy to run off to India," he replied in so decided a way that Jo could not help staring at him open-mouthed for a moment.

"…Would you? Truly?”

"Yes, but I don't want any letter from you." Far from appearing angry, Laurie smiled, and his cold words were entirely overshadowed by a confusing intensity in his eyes that threatened to devour her. Jo looked away.

"Oh," was all she said.

"Aren't you going to ask me why?"

Jo shook her head.

"I won't leave Concord if you don't come with me," Laurie said. "You…you and your parents, and Meg, and Brooke, and the babies, and Grandfather… I've money enough to do it, and hanged if I don't try."

"We can't."

"Of course you can."

Jo had to move back quickly to keep Laurie from grabbing her by the shoulders, an old retreat that was so familiar between them by now that neither of them acknowledged it.

"I… well, it might be very well for Daisy and Demi, who could ride elephants and be as wild as they please." Jo tried to give Laurie a playful smile. "But I'm topsy-turvy enough right here, where I at least know how I ought to behave. Better not to set me lose upon a whole other country. I'd only convince the natives that Americans are mad."

"Lucky for us that they already think Americans are mad," Laurie said, his voice entirely too amiable to be trusted. "See? You haven't any argument! I propose you start packing, and try not to be put out if I substitute India with New York or Timbuktu, or some other sensible location."

Now it was Jo's turn not to answer. She sat still for a few seconds, and then rose, and began to pick up the remnants of their lunch as quickly as she could. It wasn't so much his words that made her need to leave as how hopeful he seemed as he said them, and the sure knowledge that he would continue to speak of taking her away until she began to like the idea. She could not comprehend how Laurie could be the only thing keeping her from despair one moment, and yet unwittingly push her so close to the brink of it the next. She did not look behind her, as she reached the doorway, to see if he intended to follow her down to the kitchen.

"I'm not trying to make you angry,” Laurie said, as she was settling her dishes in the sink. He came up beside her, putting the few things she had not been able to carry down with hers. "But you're the one who started all the talk about running away. I have at least as much right to look after you as you do me."

"Not so," Jo said. He was so close that she could feel his warmth, though they weren't quite touching. It felt almost as though she was standing in some earlier chapter in her life, before Laurie had faded into the background as he had been required to. "You need it more than I do, you see." Jo meant for her words to sound teasing, but she forgot to smile in wondering whether they were true or not.

"Is there anything I can do to make you consider leaving with me?" Laurie asked.

"I've thought of leaving," Jo said, her hands clasped on the edge of the counter. "I've considered it more than you can imagine. I mean… I haven't thought of going with you, but I've thought of my parents leaving, me leaving… most especially of Meg leaving. The problem is, my family would never do it, and so I won't either. It isn't our way. It would be like departing for a dinner party in the middle of a battle, and leaving the everyone else wounded and screaming on the field."

Laurie placed a hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him.

"You still count me as your brother, don't you? I haven't somehow acted so badly in these past weeks, that you and your family would cast me out?"

"Teddy, you could never."

"Then," he said, "You mustn't try and saddle me with the deserter's role when you wouldn't accept it of anyone else dear to you. If you stay, I'm staying. I'll only leave if you do."

Jo sighed. The way he spoke made it sound as if he didn't care about deserting anything or anybody but her. She knew she ought to argue with him, ought to tell him as much, but she didn't, for fear that he it was an argument he would let her win.

"What do you say we shake on it?" Laurie suggested, and suddenly he was smiling at Jo as if he were only her best friend again. "Neither of us will say another word about abandoning fort, and we'll both fight on like brave soldiers?"

He extended his hand, and Jo took it, but in truth she felt like a coward for doing so. If she were only braver, she thought, she would send him away.

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There wasn't a storm outside, and Laurie knew it, every bit as well as he knew that the wind could never take on the sound of a woman's voice, much less Amy's voice. Even if the wind could contrive to sound like a perfect imitation of his dead wife, he was sure that it would have no way of managing to actually form his name, without a great deal of help from a deranged imagination. And so it was on his imagination, and its derangement, that he placed the blame for the night's strangeness.

The worst of it was that it had been happening nearly every night since Amy had died. It had happened so many times that Laurie had come to know that it could not be a nightmare, and was beginning to wonder if it might be madness preparing to creep into him. It -- Amy, the devil, the wind, or whatever it was -- begged him each night to open the window and invite it in, but something told him that as long as he didn't obey, he might still have a chance.

Laurie did not get out of bed, because experience had taught him that the sound would be the same, regardless of where he went in the house. It might not have been a manly thing to do, but he pulled his quilt up over his ears and turned his back to the window, as if that would be enough to keep the thing outside from seeing him; truthfully, he would have hidden under the bed if he had thought it would do any good.

The night before it had come to his door, and not the window. It had knocked in the most ordinary and civilized manner at first, and then frantically as he'd run down the stairs to see what it was. He might have opened it then. He almost did open it. Has hand had been on the knob when the knocking had turned into scratching, and the scratching had turned into shrieking, and he had thought to look out the window to see that the night was empty save for a thick mist that surrounded his house, and made the rest of the world seem dreadfully far away.

Laurie hadn't died the night before. Everything had gone still at the first faraway hint of birdsong. Laurie could remember thinking to himself, just before he'd finally been able to drift off to sleep, curled up on his living room couch, that he'd never before known that the birds awakened each morning even before the sun did.

It was the sound of birds that he waited for now. He knew that he would hear it, and that everything would be fine once he did. He would simply sleep until late afternoon at least, and then he would go to see Jo, and forget about everything else.

The antique grandfather clock in the living room struck three; Laurie thought of its intricate woodwork, how Amy had loved it when she'd seen it at a shop in Paris, the pains he had gone through to have it imported to their new home without her knowing… He'd never imagined it would sound so sinister, just as he'd never imagined that he would feel terror at the memory of Amy's voice. He tried to think of their honeymoon in Europe, of the paintings in the library, of her soft breathing when he'd lain beside her in this very bed, before the illness struck… but by the time that the clock struck four, Laurie's mind was so filled with the wailing outside, it was difficult to remember if Amy had ever been alive at all.

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Jo crept carefully down the stairs, aware of each treacherous rustle and creak beneath her bare feet. She'd inadvertently awakened Marmee twice that week, and it didn't seem fair to her that nobody in the house should be allowed to sleep, just because she couldn't, especially when she'd begun to think she would never be able to sleep through the night again. She'd given up even wanting to sleep by this point, and instead hoped that she could learn how to keep her mind from unraveling before anyone else noticed quite how bad it was.

Keeping away from windows at night was part of it, and she was careful to turn her back to the one she passed as she crossed the living room, and took a seat at Beth's piano. She shut her eyes tightly, and leaned against the black lid of the instrument, her head pillowed in her arms. She was being watched. She knew she was being watched, by that dreadful, wide-eyed thing that was not Beth. There was nothing Jo could do about the gaze that she could almost feel through her skin, except for not gaze back. She had lost entire nights in gazing back all ready; Jo knew that nothing she could do would turn those evil eyes from her, and was beginning to suppose that nothing she could do would make them finally advance, either.

During Beth's last few days on earth, she had used to hum to herself, and sometimes she had moved her thin fingers against the coverlet, as if playing on her piano. "I think," she had told Jo, the very day before she died, "that there is beautiful music in heaven. I think I can hear it now." If Beth's spirit-- the real Beth's spirit-- was anywhere in the house, Jo was certain that the piano would be the best place to look for it. Jo did not think that even the devil himself could touch her, if she could just fix the image of Beth strongly enough in her mind to push away all of the terrible things she was thinking of.

It was some time before Jo dared to lift her head. At first she thought her trick had worked, for when she dared to look out the window she could only see the expanse of her family's garden, and the dark windows of the Laurence mansion next door. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told her, however, that it was almost morning, and the thing had only left according to its custom.

Jo rose tentatively, going to the window and putting her hand against the cool glass. If anything had been there, it left no sign of its presence. There were no footprints in the grass outside, no evidence of any strangeness whatsoever, and Jo felt ashamed for being so very frightened.

She would put an end to it, Jo decided. She would start by preparing an early breakfast for her family, drinking as much coffee as she could get away with, and simply pushing her way through the long day to come as if nothing had happened. Then, once darkness fell, she would go outside and find out for herself if there really was something to be afraid of.

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	9. Chapter 9

"Laurie? Laurie, wake up!"

Laurie awoke with a start, but it was only Jo peering down at him as if she weren't quite sure whether or not she ought to have roused him. He was lying upon the couch in her attic and she was perched on the edge of the cushion where his body left a little space. Both of her hands were resting upon his shoulder.

"Now you shall never be able to tease me about snoring again," she said, a grin flickering wickedly across her face. It surprised him to see her smile like that. She'd been so drawn, solemn, and altogether uncanny as of late that he'd barely known what to make of her.

" I lost track of time," she continued in a low whisper. "I saw you were drifting off hours ago, and you looked as though you needed it, so I didn't make a sound."

"What time is it?" Laurie asked. Jo had drawn the curtains, but he knew it must be late, for no light shown through them. He only hoped that Jo could not feel his heart pounding deep in his chest from where she sat.

"It's past sunset,” she said. Laurie wasn't sure if it was a strange answer, or if the nervous way in which she looked at the curtains when she said it simply made it seem strange. It was enough to make him wonder if she too had begun to measure her days not in minutes and hours, but in periods of light and dark. Jo’s hands were clasped tightly in her lap, and when she spoke again, her voice was far more apologetic than it should have been.

"I also fell asleep," she admitted. "I couldn't help it."

Laurie sat up, careful not to push Jo off the couch in the process. He'd had a better view of her lying down. She was leaning forward in such a way that her expression was completely hidden by her long hair. He wanted to take her face in his hands and turn her towards him, but he didn't dare try it.

"You're lying about the snoring," he said, because she seemed like she needed to be teased.

"Am not." She pushed him. He was glad that she did. "You sounded exactly like a bear with a bad head cold."

Laurie laughed, and he thought Jo would have joined him, if something hadn't caused the window to shake at that very moment. If Laurie didn't shudder at the sound, it was only because his eyes were fixed on Jo, and she had gone so still that he could think of nothing else. Though he had been worrying about touching her just moments before, he covered her hand with his, and found that he wasn't surprised when she let him.

"It was the wind," he said feebly. Jo nodded. He could feel her let out the breath that she had been holding. When the sound came again, she didn't react to it.

"Should I be a proper gent and walk you home?"

Jo smiled again, more warmly than before, but far less convincingly. She'd slipped her hand out from under his as if it had never been there at all. She was already standing up, and she took his arm to pull him with her.

Laurie did not speak, but watched Jo, and listened for any more sounds from outside. He'd removed his jacket and tie before falling asleep, and Jo picked them up off the floor and threw them over for him to catch. The only thing he could hear was her soft breathing, but the air in the attic felt so queer that it was all he could do not to shiver.

"Teddy?"

Laurie's first thought was that Jo had never spoken his name in precisely that way. Her voice was too small, but she didn't look frightened, only intensely thoughtful. There was another sound from outside, so soft that it could have only been the scratching of a tree branch.

"You're standing like a statue," Jo muttered. She took the tie she had just given him, and in a quick movement, began to wrap it tightly around his neck.

"It's not a scarf, Jo," he said. Her hands were shaking, but he grinned at her and pushed her gently away as if he hadn't felt it. "You ought to know better from our old theatre games."

"I'm out of practice."

"If you're so eager to dress me, I'll hand over my jacket. I trust you still remember how to manage buttons?"

"I'd rather try the tie again, and strangle you with it."

Laurie knew that Jo meant her words to be playful, but the effect was not quite the same when she stood so still, and looked right past him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing."

He hadn't really expected any other answer. Jo glanced once more at the window, and then disappeared down the stairs. Laurie put on his jacket and tie, and followed after her.

Jo met him at the doorway.

"I've told Marmee where I'm going," she said.

"She's letting you?" It was hard to believe. Laurie was certain that the only way Mrs. March would allow Jo out into the night was if the night's danger existed only within his own mind. Perhaps he was the lone madman, the one and only person for whom every breeze, every rustle of branches, foretold disaster. It didn't matter. He didn't want Jo outside, logic be damned. She reached out to open the door, but her hand lingered for too long on the knob; he pulled it away.

"You stay here," he said. "We'll arrive at my home late, and if you're with me, I'll feel obliged to walk you home after. We could go on all night!"

Jo looked hard at him for a moment. "You haven't had a full night's sleep since Amy died, have you?" shw spat out the words in a rapid whisper as if she couldn't help herself, and they were such that they left Laurie reeling. "Something's gone terribly wrong."

At first, all Laurie could do was stare at her. She was wide-eyed and desperate, and in that moment it was so utterly apparent that she _knew_ that he could have taken her in his arms. He would have done it, and told her everything about Amy, about the haunting… but the words wouldn't come.

Laurie opened his mouth to tell her. He tried. He faltered. He meant to. He really meant to, almost so much that it hurt… and he found that he couldn't do it. His memories of Amy had been so confused as of late, the maddened shrieks at the height of her illness mixed with the moaning each night at his window, and even if he could tell Jo anything else in the world, he was not sure he could speak to her of this.

And so Laurie searched for something that would let the subject pass peaceably.

"It is terrible. It should never have happened, but we carry on as best we can."

Jo didn't say that that wasn't what she had meant, but a miserable flush rose in her face.

"Will you promise me that you'll get some rest tonight, Jo?" Laurie wished he could apologize and start over again.

"Do you think it's dangerous to be outside at night?"  
.

"No," Laurie said, so quickly that he couldn't taste the bitterness of his lie until after it had left his lips. He knew even before Jo answered that he would have to prove it.

"Then I'll walk with you," Jo said. "I've been out later than this, and I'm sure you've never known me to be afraid of the dark."

Laurie nodded. There was nothing else to be done. He opened the door. She'd trapped him into it.

They stepped outside together. The sky was clear. The stars shown brightly, and Laurie couldn't feel even the slightest breeze. It was as still as death, yet Laurie couldn't help but think that he heard something very much like somebody breathing, a little ways off in the distance. The door to Jo's home slammed shut, though neither of them had touched it. Jo grasped his arm, looked rapidly about her, and then up at him.

"Sleep at your Grandfather's house tonight," Jo said. "Run over there this instant. I'll watch here to be sure you make it."

He didn't question her. At that moment he could not even bring himself to think her words, or the graveness with which she said them, odd.

"Go inside and watch from the window,” he said. She opened the door. Laurie was surprised to see it opened so easily, given the suddenness with which it had closed, but he didn't stay to ponder it. He raced the short distance to his Grandfather's home.

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From the look that Marmee gave her when she came back into the house, less than five minutes after having announced she was leaving, Jo was sure that her mother was aware that something was wrong. However, she also knew that Marmee would give her a chance to solve her problems herself, and never demand any explanation of her that she was not yet ready to give. Jo knew it would be blasphemous to pray that her family would chock her odd behavior up to problems with Laurie or some other innocuous thing, but she willed it as hard as she could before going upstairs to her room.

The first thing she did was pull open her curtains, which she had been in the habit of keeping tightly fastened at all times, as if mere bits of cloth could keep the devil at bay. Everything outside seemed ordinary, still as it had been when she had stood at the door with Laurie only a few minutes earlier. She couldn't tell if the night was still filled with the terrifying energy she had felt before; if it was there, at least she couldn't see it. Perhaps it had only been Laurie. She didn't know now if he was truly experiencing something more than he was telling her, or if she'd somehow goaded him into looking strange and fearful, but she could not doubt that they'd fed off of each other's fears this night in a way that wasn't good for either of them. Even now, she didn't know if she wanted to apologize for prodding him in such a childish manner, try to shake the truth out of him, or keep silent and hope that the whole incident would pass without further comment.

Marmee came to check on her an hour or so later, after Jo had blown out the candles and tucked herself into bed. Jo didn't close her eyes to feign sleep, but she smiled at Marmee, who smiled back at her before closing the door. Even after she had gone, the room felt warmer, and even through all of the exhaustion and fear that had built up over the past weeks, Jo knew that she was lucky. She resolved that she would keep the curtains open, and refuse to fear anything, unless something came her way that was worth fearing.

But still, Jo couldn't sleep. She felt tight and restless all over, and kept her eyes fixed on the scene beyond her window. She'd been out, and nothing had happened. Maybe, she reasoned, if she could just go this one night without seeing the girl, it would go away for good.

Eventually the windows of the Laurence mansion went black. Jo found that she was blinking sleepily, though her nerves had yet to subside, and she was sure that she would have nightmares the moment she drifted off.

Then she appeared. Jo hadn't seen her arrive. She'd only closed her eyes only for a moment, and opened them to see her there, staring and staring as it always stared. And though Jo had felt at the edge of screaming just moments ago, she didn't even startle at seeing her fears realized. She'd expected it to happen.

Jo had never spoken to the girl before, not so much as a single word. The part of Jo that believed in the girl knew her to be evil, and the part of her that didn't refused to converse with a figment. She didn't speak to the girl now. She only looked into her eyes for a moment, then stood and ran out of her room. She went into the kitchen, opened one of the drawers, and lifted out a large knife, one normally used to cut meat. She held it for a moment, considered putting it back. Whatever the thing at the window was, it looked like a person. She would be damned for even thinking about harming it, yet she could not find the resolve to put the knife down. Amy had gone out at night, and it had resulted in the bites that had killed her. So many people had died. Surely there was something worse out there to protect herself against than her imagination could create. She held her breath, listened… the house was entirely silent. No one was awake but her. She would simply slip out for long enough to establish that the girl didn't really exist, and then she would go back to bed and forget about it, whatever her eyes told her to the contrary.

Jo opened the door, closed it, backed slowly out from her house. The grass tickled her feet. She should have thought to put shoes on, but she would be inside again soon. She looked up at her window, and nothing was there. Nothing. She looked around and around her, and saw only the night, but she didn't feel any relief. Something was making her breath stick in her throat, and she didn't know what it was. Something was wrong.

It was too quiet. Normally at this time of the evening, she would be able to hear crickets, or the rustle of night animals. There would be fireflies, or moths, or at least mosquitoes. It felt to Jo as if she were the only living creature left in the world. Her arms hung at her side, one hand still gripping the knife. There was something behind her. Jo turned, just in time to see a flicker of white in the trees that faced away from her home and the Laurence mansion. She followed it.

Five minutes later, when it seemed she was alone again, and she began to think that she must return home, she heard a branch break somewhere ahead of her. She continued on, drawn forward by strange sounds, by glimpses of something which never came close enough to be made out properly. Soon her house was completely out of sight.

Something was growling, or crying. Jo couldn't tell which. It wasn't a real sound, and so it could be more than one sound at time, could encompass danger, sorrow, death, and life, without really existing at all. Jo went very still. She knew where she was. She was about half a mile from home, a mere five minute walk from the river where she had used to skate in the winter, where Amy had almost drowned. If she were to turn to the left, and take a shortcut through the trees, she could reach her Aunt March's home in less than an hour. If she were to turn to the right, she was only fifteen minutes away from farmlands, fences, and open fields. She could turn back and go home. She didn't know which direction the sound was coming from, though, and she didn't know whether she wanted to run from it or try and face it head on as she'd come out to.

Footsteps. Jo could hear footsteps, coming rapidly towards her. Something grabbed onto her shoulder, and she gasped, turned, nearly dropped her knife, and found herself face to face with Laurie. Only with Laurie. She almost could have laughed from relief, though he held on to her by both arms, and looked about as far from laughing as she'd ever seen him.

"I saw you from the window, going into the trees," he said so quickly Jo thought he would trip over his words. "I didn't know which way you'd gone. I've been looking for you for… I don't know how long. I thought perhaps… perhaps you… I thought you were sleepwalking, like Amy. Jo, what on earth are you doing out here?"

"I saw something," she said. "I came out here to find out what it was."

Laurie looked down at her, his hold on her arms so tight that Jo feared he would leave bruises. She knew that he was taking in the whole of her appearance -- her nightgown, the knife, the scratches on her feet and ankles from wandering barefoot through the forest. Jo looked down, not without a pang of guilt for the effect her strange appearance must have on him, after everything he'd been through lately.

Jo felt sure that Laurie was about to shake her, but instead he wrapped her in a crushing embrace. She could feel his heartbeat, and his breathing as he tried to slow it. She could not hear the growling any more, only him. She hoped that she wasn't shaking, that she seemed calm. She wanted to feel braver than he was just then, to keep herself from feeling that he'd come and rescued her from a wicked, unnamable fate.

"You're holding a carver's knife."

"I know."

He ran his hand through her hair, pushing it gently away from her neck. Jo knew what he was looking for, understood why he needed to see, but it felt as strange as anything else she had seen or heard that night. His hand stilled on her neck, on the place where so many others had been marked for death. She felt the press of his lips upon that very place, so quick and so light that she could almost have imagined it. Though it was a warm night, a shiver ran through her.

"I thought…" Laurie started, but his voice was more than Jo could bear. She pushed him away in a quick, nervous gesture, and found that she could not look at him for having done it.

"You thought I'd been…" Bitten. Jo couldn't say the word. The very thought made her feel ill. "That it had happened to me. Well, it hasn't. So, you mustn't let worry make you ridiculous."

Laurie didn't say anything; there was something ominous about it. Jo was felt wave of panic that had nothing to do with whatever might be lurking in the woods.

"I've already checked you," Jo said. "I did it earlier today when I was putting on your tie. You don't have them either."

"They don't always appear on the neck. Another woman died today, Jo. I heard of her from the servants. She was only twenty years old, and about to be married. She was ill for months, and nobody knew what was wrong until they were preparing her for burial, and they found a bite on her upper thigh, near the vein there."

The occasion was too solemn for it, but Jo couldn't help but blush. It was partially that she had never given enough thought to her upper thigh to notice that there might be veins there, and partially because she still had not ceased to think about the feel of Laurie's hand on her neck.

"I'll look tonight," Jo said, and if it was possible, she went even redder. Laurie seemed almost as though he might smile, but the expression only lasted the briefest of seconds before darkening again.

"We won't talk any more about it out here." He took hold of Jo’s upper arm. "It isn't safe."

He made as if to pull her away, but Jo didn't move.

"What isn't safe about it?"

"Jo. You're holding a god-forsaken carver's knife. You know."

Somebody was laughing. It wasn't Jo or Laurie, but it was a very familiar, very sharp laugh. Laurie winced, but stood his ground. He wouldn't leave without her. Jo tried to turn towards where she thought the laugh had come from, but Laurie pulled her forward so violently that she almost stumbled.

"Stop," she said, for she knew if she didn't that she would never get any answers from him. "Teddy, please just tell me that you're hearing these things, and seeing these things too. I'll go with you as soon as you tell me, but it isn't fair to let me think that I've gone mad and am seeing things that don't exist, when it's not the truth."

Laurie did stop, but he didn't answer. He only went so dreadfully pale that Jo was afraid he might faint, though she'd never before considered that a man might do such a thing. Jo turned around, and from that point on, she had no reason to doubt that they were both seeing the same thing.


	10. Chapter 10

After weeks of uncertainty, weeks of scratches, and creaks, of storms and voices echoing against the taunting darkness, after weeks and weeks and weeks of wanting to hide, and thinking himself insane, and greeting each day with bloodshot eyes… after all of this, and more which Laurie could not begin to comprehend or categorize, Amy stood before him.

There could be no doubt that it was Amy, though it was not Amy as she had been on the day of her death; her face was not half so gaunt and twisted, her body had filled out, and the cuts and bruises she had inflicted upon herself during her madness were gone. And there could be no doubt that it was Amy, though she was so changed from the woman he had married as to be another thing entirely; Her skin, though smooth and unblemished, held the dread pallor of disease, and there was a hateful gleam in those once familiar blue eyes. Her lips were red, and her dress was stained with blood.

The thing that was Amy stepped forward and then stilled, ready to advance upon Laurie. Something fell to the forest floor with a dull metallic thud.

Jo. He'd almost forgotten about Jo. She'd dropped her knife. He moved out so he was just in front of her, for some instinct told him that they might need to fight and that he ought to be the one to begin it if it came to that, if he could find it within himself to do anything at all.

Amy's face twisted into a snarl, such as she'd never worn in life, not even when she'd lain in bed, writhing, cursing him, Jo, and her illness in equal measure. Her lips curled back to reveal a pair of pointed teeth, similar to those of a dog or a wolf. Amy looked straight at him, as if she meant for him, wanted him to see.

"Amy, don't…" Jo's voice quick and low, neither pleading nor commanding, only terribly desperate. Amy's expression flickered, and she looked from Laurie to Jo and back again, as if recognizing them for the first time.

"Don't," Amy repeated. She shook her head, as if dazed. Her voice was hallow, and the hatred in her face had been replaced with emptiness. It was like gazing upon a doll of Amy, or the most perfectly wrought sculpture ever made. She came towards them again, and then stopped abruptly, less than a foot away from Laurie. Jo gasped behind him, but for some reason she didn't run. She started to pull him backwards by his shirt, only to let her hand drop an instant later. Amy smelled of blood and rancid flesh.

"Don't,” Amy said again, her voice tinged with just enough hesitance to make it human and almost familiar. Laurie knew that if she chose that moment to attack, he would not be able to make a move against her; she did not, but she stood absolutely still, more still than any living creature could have stood, for she did not appear even to be breathing. Laurie did not look away, and though the specter before his eyes was brighter and more solid than any ghost he'd ever read about, the scene around him appeared to waver.

Then the air filled with a thick blinding fog that took Amy with it as it dispersed. The woods were empty, save for Jo, who stood unmoving beside him.

Somebody screamed in the distance.

They needed to get away. Laurie grabbed Jo by the wrist, not caring if he pulled her arm out of its socket, or what rocks and bushes might do to her bare feet as they ran. They reached the expanse between their two houses in a breathless rush, faster than Laurie could ever remember having run before.

"Come to my house," Jo whispered. Laurie was surprised that she could speak at all, from the look on her face. They went inside, and he watched as she fumbled at the lock on her door, almost as if she'd forgotten how it worked. He batted her hand away, twisted the lock shut, and set about pushing a chair or two against the door for good measure. Jo moved about the room, shutting every curtain, and lighting a gas lamp, which she put on the table in front of the couch, before sinking down upon it. She did not say a word, but looked sickly pale, the terror of what they had just seen wrought clear upon her face.

If Jo had assumed any other attitude, Laurie did not know what he would have done. If she had seemed well, if she'd spoken to him, or tried to rationalize what they had just seen, Laurie was quite sure that he would have screamed and screamed. The room was so quiet that Laurie could not but be quiet himself, though something very like tears stung his eyes, and his stomach refused to settle. He sat next to Jo. All he could think was that he needed to fix an image in his mind of Amy, the true Amy, before every good memory he had of her could be overshadowed by the fiend he had just seen.

During their courting, Laurie had discovered that Amy had still possessed, among her many formidable charms, the very same smile he had known her to have as a young girl. It had been something artless that lay hidden most of the time, beneath the perfect mask of grace and poise she chose to show the world. Half the fun of it was that even he had had trouble finding it more often than not; he could have spent days or even years devising ever more creative methods of bringing about that smile. He'd been prepared to spend a lifetime doing just that. It was Amy's smile that he tried concentrate on, but he simply couldn't do it without coming back to the thought of fangs and bloody lips.

Laurie gulped back the sourness that rose in his throat and pulled Jo close to him, as close as he possibly could. She was warm, and still, and not half so soft as any other woman he'd ever held, sharper than he'd remembered her, under the light fabric of her nightgown. He concentrated on her, because she was the only thing he had to keep the image of Amy at bay, to remind him that he was not yet dead, and that morning might still come. Jo kept her eyes fixed on the flickering flame of the lamp, while Laurie kept his eyes fixed on her, and wondered if the shadows in the room could reach down into him and suck out his soul.

"You saw her,” Laurie said in Jo's ear, when at last the silence and his thoughts became too oppressive to bear.

"I saw her. I think I shan't be able to close my eyes again without seeing her. Only…" Jo shuddered and closed her mouth tightly.

Laurie waited.

"Teddy, there has to be more to it than what we saw! I don't believe… well, it had to have been something, but…"

Laurie waited for her to go on, waited and waited, only to have her whisper "I don't know," in a voice that chilled his blood. He was thinking that he wanted to look at her neck again, when the steps creaked, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Mrs. March held onto the railing, peering over the staircase at the two of them. Laurie gave a short laugh, and then stifled it when she met his eyes. Apparently relief was not the proper response to being discovered in the March home at some ungodly hour of the morning, but even the way that Mrs. March was looking at them did not seem so bad in light of the fact that she was a living person. She was proof that the life they had lived before wandering in the woods that night still existed.

Laurie didn't remember to let go of Jo until he felt her pulling away from him. She rose and met her mother as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Mrs. March looked Jo up and down once, and any anger on her face was at once replaced with concern.

"What's happened?" She asked. She looked only briefly up at Lauri over Jo's shoulder, giving all of her attention to her daughter.

"Neither of us are hurt," Jo said. Laurie could not believe that Mrs. March could find anything in Jo's manner reassuring. "Laurie's just…he's over there."

"I can see that." Mrs. March took hold of Jo's arms, and looked again at Laurie, searching him. He doubted he looked much better than Jo did, but he stood, and tried to ready himself for any explanations they must give. The problem was thinking of what he could possibly say, how he could say it, whether or not he would be able to make himself say anything sensible at all.

"I can explain…" Laurie started, only to have Jo speak over him.

"I heard something outside, so I went to look," she said, glancing back at Laurie, and then at the barricaded door. If the situation had been reversed, and his grandfather had been the one to find them, he would have asked one hundred questions by now, and demanded just as many explanations. Mrs. March regarded Jo quietly, then pushed her hair back to inspect her neck as Laurie had done earlier. She touched her hand to Jo's forehead and cheeks, checking for fever as if Jo was not invincible, as if she could be taken from the world every bit as easily as Beth and Amy had been; Laurie felt a pang of terror at the thought, even as Marmee's face settled with relief.

"I'm not ill," Jo continued. "I shouldn't have gone out. It was a terrible idea. I daresay I…" Jo seemed to shudder. "I ought to put my imagination to better use than frightening myself and everybody else in the process."

Good God, did she truly believe that was what had happened? Normally, when Jo tried to lie she looked down at the ground, and made it so obvious that it was a good thing that she nearly never attempted it. She was looking at Marmee now, though Laurie could only see the back of her.

"I think you had better sit down," Mrs. March said mildly, steering Jo back towards the couch, "and tell me everything that went on this evening, from the beginning. Laurie, you stay here as well. I suspect you have something to say as to what you're doing here?"

Laurie would tell her anything if it meant he did not have to go back outside before the sun rose. Given a few minutes, he hoped he could even come up with an explanation that didn't involve ghosts and hellfire.

"I saw Jo through the window going into the woods. I thought…" That she was sleepwalking like Amy --Amy, who was dead, but wandered about at night in a bloody dress. Laurie brushed his eyes with the back of his hand.

"He was afraid for me.” Even Jo sounded feeble. "And I suppose my being afraid myself didn't help him any. If there were ghosts, they'd be out in droves. Maybe I thought -- only for a second mind you -- that I saw something, but only for a second. Maybe even less than that. It's dark at night, so there's even less to see in those woods at night than there is during the day. "

Laurie forced himself to look up. Jo's hands were clenched tightly against her knees, and she slouched forward slightly. The worry had not faded from Marmee's features in the least, and he knew he needed to think of something comforting to add this safe, fictional world that Jo was spinning with far less expertise than even her earliest writings had shown.

"It will be morning soon," was the best that he could come up with. It wasn't enough.

Mrs. March looked more tired than Laurie had ever seen her. He hadn't stopped much to consider the toll that their present circumstances might be taking on Marmee, but he knew at once that it was the only thing Jo was thinking of currently.

"You're exhausted," Mrs March said finally, turning to him. "You should go back to your grandfather's house now, Laurie, and get some rest."

It wasn't a suggestion, and worse, Jo didn't argue, or insist on watching through the window to make sure he made it. He sat for longer than he should have, waiting for some response from her, and feeling her mother's eyes upon him. When he rose to leave, Jo didn't even look up.

He stood in front of the doorway, has hands hanging awkwardly at his sides, and at first he could do nothing but stare at the barricade he'd made, feeling for the moment that it would truly be an insurmountable task to cross it. Apparently the strangeness of this was not lost on Marmee, who came up behind him just as he was reaching down to lift the first chair clear of the door.

"On second thought," she said, scrutinizing him and the doorway in turn, "Laurie, I think you had better sleep on our couch tonight, and we'll sort this out in the morning."

The tightness had returned to his throat so that he couldn't speak, and the motherly hand that Mrs. March placed on his shoulder only made it worse. He was relieved that she did not ask any questions of him, though she sighed in the manner of one who was overwhelmed before guiding him back to his seat.

There was no birdsong to be heard outside. The hour of dawn had not yet come, though it would soon. The sound of Mrs. March opening and closing cabinets to gather spare bedding was almost as good. Laurie was left alone with Jo long enough to exchange a glance with her, but not long enough to read the expression on her face. Then he was handed a blanket and pillow, and she was led up to bed.

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Chapter 10

 

None of this could be allowed to touch Marmee. Jo pushed away all other thoughts but that one, told herself that nothing else was of any importance. She felt tired and sore all over, and it took almost more energy than she had to keep from panicking, but she kept her face carefully set, and allowed herself to be led up to bed, not even pausing to glance back down the stairs at Laurie.

Marmee lit a candle without Jo having to tell her that she needed it, and sat down next to her on the bed, holding the little light carefully between them. For all that Jo felt she had lived out a nightmare in the course of the last few hours, Marmee's tired and lined face made Jo wonder if her mother hadn't been going through something just as bad for months already, as she watched one daughter after another sicken and die.

"Nothing will happen to me," Jo said, when she'd gathered up enough strength and presence of mind to speak.

"I think that something has been happening to you for quite some time now," Marmee replied. The words would have sounded accusing, if Marmee had not chosen that moment to take her hand, and hold it tightly.

"I--" Jo thought again of what she had seen that night. All she could comprehend of it was that it had looked like Amy. The memory of it was enough to take her breath away , and she could not say any more, even knowing how necessary it was that she speak. She thought of the girl at the window, and Amy's teeth, and the way that Laurie's arms had closed around her. She held on to that last thought, taking from it the inspiration she so badly needed.

"It's Laurie," Jo spat out. She sounded terrified, but there was nothing to be done about that. "I promise, Marmee, that we weren't doing anything… well, anything terribly wrong." Jo flushed at what she was saying, but if she could make Marmee think that the problem was something other than bites and madness, perhaps it would be worth it.

This strange declaration only made Marmee look confused. She set the candle down on the bedside table, and then turned back to Jo.

"We only meant to take a walk together," Jo continued. Her mouth felt dry. She instinctively looked away from Marmee, but her glance fell first on the window, then her own scratched and dirty feet, and she couldn't suppress the shudder that ran through her. She didn't want to lie to her mother, and moreover she didn't like the lie that she was in the midst of telling. "It was a stupid thing to do, and you mustn't blame him, because it was I that suggested he stay at his grandfather's and meet me outside tonight. He's been so lonely and… I thought maybe… just maybe we would be good for each other this once."

Marmee put a finger on Jo's lips to silence her, but Jo only went on faster.

"But we aren't. I'm thoughtless, and cruel, and I -- teased him! And frightened him with ghost stories. I…"

"Jo, stop."

Jo could hear the disappointment and the concern in Marmee's voice, and realized belatedly hat she had been staring at the ceiling through most of her speech. Marmee smoothed the edge of Jo's nightgown, which fell just below her knees, and Jo knew that her scratches and scrapes were evidence enough that she had not planned to go out, or been in her right mind when leaving the house. She felt suddenly as if she might cry, and though her first instinct was to hide her face in her hands so that Marmee wouldn't see, she somehow merely found herself gazing dry-eyed ahead of her.

"Stand up now, and let me look at you," Marmee ordered, her mouth set in a certain way that Jo understood very well. Once Jo was standing, Marmee began by pushing her hair off of her neck, and searching once again for any marks, though she'd looked only an hour before. Her examination continued from there, and though Marmee's movements were quick and gentle, and Jo felt too dazed to pay proper attention to any of it, she had no doubts as to why this had had to be put off until they were away from Laurie. After she had finished, Marmee sat down on the bed with a disturbed and thoughtful expression, and seemed unable to muster the resolve to speak.

Jo turned away from Marmee and lay down, but she reached out for her hand and held it close to her chest even as she did so, half in apology, and half to ease the shaky, shocked part of her wasn't at all ready to be alone.

"Tell me one thing honestly, and I'll let you sleep for the night," Marmee said, leaning over Jo, stroking her shoulder as though she could not possibly touch her enough.

"I'll try."

Marmee did not continue right away, and when she did, her voice was urgent enough to make Jo feel that she was the wickedest daughter who had ever lived, for worrying her family so.

"Do you remember, fully, whatever has gone on this night? Were you awake or were you dreaming?"

Marmee's hand stilled upon her, no longer stroking, but merely clasping her tightly. Jo remembered Amy, and how much she hadn't known at the end, and was rendered speechless in wondering if it really had been Amy she had seen this night, and whether or not Amy now knew all the mysteries that had brought them to this point.

"Jo?"

"I could retrace my every step, if you needed me to," Jo said, and Marmee's grip loosened just a bit.

Jo did not remember falling asleep, but she remembered waking several times during the night and early morning, and being greeted not by the chilling gaze of demon eyes at the window, but by soft words and motherly warmth.

When Jo finally opened her eyes to find the room filled with cheerful sunlight, Marmee was fast asleep beside her. Jo sat up carefully, both because she wished not to disturb, and because she was genuinely surprised to find that night was over, and she was safe, and in one piece. Tentatively, she spread her blanket over her Marmee's thin shoulders, hoping all the while that this tender gesture wouldn't wake her.

Marmee had stayed with her through the night, and it seemed right to Jo that she should remain in bed to be there when Marmee awakened. After a few minutes, however, of lying against her pillow and trying not to think, she found her mind fixed most intently on Laurie. He had spent the night alone downstairs, with no one in particular to protect him from the world outside, or from himself. Jo stood, willing her footsteps to be soundless. Marmee would understand. Marmee always wanted her to do what was right, and entirely abandoning her dearest friend wasn't.

Laurie wasn't in the living room. Jo even lifted up the blanket, which he'd left in a discarded heap on the couch, as if she might find some sign of him lying under it. Laurie wasn't in the kitchen either, but Jo's father was sitting at the table, and he appeared quite as grim as Marmee had earlier.

"Six people were found dead last night," he said, in a toneless voice that Jo hardly recognized, "all of them within four miles of here. There could be more yet."

Jo's mouth fell open at that.

"Six?" She croaked, when her throat had loosened enough to let her speak.

Her father nodded.

"Christopher Columbus," Jo whispered, quietly enough that perhaps her father might not have heard. She looked off to the side, away from both her father and the window, but the idea of all the bodies had fixed itself in her mind so that she half expected to see them piled up tidily besides Hannah's stove.

"I spoke with Laurie this morning. He told me what happened last night, or what he thought happened."

Jo had to swallow a groan at this, near dizzy as she was with the knowledge of what madness Laurie may have introduced into her family already, and with the reality of the even worse fate they had avoided.

"The boy's a wreck," Jo’s father said, watching her intently, most likely trying to judge whether or not she was as well.

"It's my fault!" Jo said quickly, but try as she might, she couldn't make herself continue on with the same story she had told Marmee the night before. "Oh, what has he been going on about?" she asked instead.

Apparently it had been the right thing to say, for a look of tentative relief passed over her father's features.

"Do you not know?" He asked, and from the caution in his voice, Jo could have no doubt as to what her answer must be.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean she could properly form it, or do anything other than shake her head, and try to look as if she weren't still tangled up in the previous night's dread.

Just like that, all traces of relief vanished.

"Don't lose time placing fault," her father said, "something horrible is happening, and I don't want to see you, or Laurie, or any other member of this family become a part of it."

"I don't believe we truly saw anything last night," Jo mumbled to the table, for she had found that it did not look back at her as sharply as her father did presently.

"Jo," father said, and his voice was incongruously soft, "your mother is the strongest woman -- nay, the strongest person I've ever known, but for everyone there comes a point that is beyond all endurance. You must keep yourself safe for her sake -- for mine and Meg's as well."

Jo felt she ought to say something, be it a promise of care or an assertion of her current well-being, but she remained quiet, for her father's words gave her too much to think of to allow for a hasty reply. She wondered how many good men her father had seen pass that breaking point of which he spoke, if he had ever stood on that that threshold, and if she herself wasn't approaching dangerously close to it.

"Whether you saw something or not, you were out there, and you may well have been killed," father continued. "There are times for bravery and recklessness. If whatever is causing all of this death was something I thought you could fight against with a chance of winning, I would be the first to encourage you to go out and do it. But Jo, this is an animal, or a disease, if not something worse. Keep close to those who need you now, and don't go chasing after darkness that you don't understand."

Though Jo was quick to nod her assent, she found that she still couldn't look her father in the eye as she did so. She would do her best not to court danger, and bring more pain down upon her family. Yet, Jo knew that one could lie as surely through silence as through the most carefully crafted words. She would not chase after darkness, not at all. It was the darkness that was after her, and she had just committed the greatest dishonesty of her life by not saying so.

________________________________________


	11. Chapter 11

Laurie could not remember the last time that he had felt calm. Or rather, he had a very keen memory of times and situations in which he had been happy and free of the fear that currently dogged him. He knew quite well that for the majority of his life he had been able to sleep through the night, drink tea without his hands shaking, and eat without any protest from his stomach. It was the actual sensation of being at ease that he could not bring to mind, though he suspected it had something to do with not being able to feel his own heart beat, and not having the image of golden curls and a bloody dress lurking just behind his eyelids, should he dare to close them.

Amy -- for he had no doubt now that it truly was her -- had become more persistent than she had been before. She cried, accused, pleaded, howled, rattled at doors and windows, and fought to get inside. He'd seen her in glimpses only, and she'd seemed in turns to be miserable and angry, loving and vicious. She didn't answer any of the questions he posed her, and he didn't open his home to her, though it was truly her home more than it had ever been his.

Laurie had seen Jo almost every day since the night he had followed her into the woods. He could not have avoided Jo if he had wanted to. Her parents seemed to have taken it into their minds that he was an object of great concern, and insisted on him taking at least one meal with them each day.

Jo on the other hand… Well, Laurie wasn't sure that Jo was particularly concerned for him at all. He hadn't been able to gain a moment alone with her since they had seen Amy. She had ventured a few times to pat him on the shoulder in a nervous, dismissive sort of way, which struck him as woefully akin to how someone might try to calm a cart horse that was inconveniencing them. More often, she'd shot him warning glares when his conversation faltered, and resorted to kicking him under the table, when he began to look too much as if he might fall asleep.

That was why when Jo showed up at Laurie’s door at a little past noon one day, after almost a week of silence and nonsense between them, Laurie wasn't sure whether he was truly happy to see her.

He had been lying half asleep on his couch when he heard her knock, for tired though he was, achieving anything more than a fitful rest during the brightest hours of daylight had become difficult. Jo’s knock at the door came loud and sharp, and though Laurie didn't want to admit it, he had to swallow a cry for fear that Amy had come to haunt his days as well as his nights. He had no intention whatsoever of opening his door, until Jo decided to see if she would have better luck tapping at his window, and he caught a glimpse of her face peeking in.

"We've decided you shouldn't stay here by yourself any longer," Jo announced once he'd unlocked the latch and let his front door swing open. "So, I'm here to help you move some of your things back to your grandfather's house for the time being."

From anyone else, the speech would have struck Laurie as bold, bordering on audacious, but coming from Jo he was more inclined to notice that she leaned against the door frame rather than coming in, and the way she scrunched up the edge of her apron in her fist, as if she were not quite certain what to do with her hands. She hadn't so much as bothered to great him; Laurie would have liked to point this out, but he was far too busy rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and blinking at her.

"Marmee decided it, to be honest," Jo continued, "And since she was willing to send me here on my own to convince you, I thought I'd best agree."

She was still standing in the doorway, watching him with her keen grey eyes, and waiting for an invitation that he'd never needed to issue before. Laurie wasn't sure, but he thought she sounded apologetic.

"Must I convince you?" Jo asked, when once again he failed to answer her.

"No," he said, "I hate it here. I'll go. Amy…" Laurie stopped. Jo hadn't mentioned Amy, and he suspected if he did she would only hush him, or scold him for being ridiculous. She'd been acting as if she hadn't been there with him that night, and seen her at all, and Laurie would be damned if he acted the part of the lone lunatic. "I'll do whatever you or your mother thinks is best, of course. Why not?"

Laurie wondered when, exactly, Jo was going to come inside. There was a tremor about her lips that he almost liked, though he knew her well enough to know that something was wrong, and she wanted to steel herself against it, just as he knew himself well enough to know that he didn't really want to see her falter or fall apart, even if he entertained thoughts of it currently.

"I'll go up to your room," Jo offered, "I'll sort out your things from Amy's, and find what clothing you should take. Normally I'd say you've got better taste than I when it comes to this sort of thing, but I don't trust you not to mistake a corset for a pair of trousers, the way you look now. You look over your books, and pack up the ones you'll want right away."

Laurie hardly had time to nod his assent before Jo had slipped in the door, patted him on the shoulder in that obnoxious fashion he wished she'd never learned, and made her way up the stairs, leaving him to wonder why she would bother to come, only to promptly leave him on his own again. He did go to his library, but he couldn't think of a single book that he wanted. Instead he stared up at Amy's pictures, which didn't stare back at him. He thought that they really ought to stare back at him. At least that would be in keeping with the turn his life had taken. It was downright rude of them to hang on the wall so innocuously, exactly where he and Jo had put them, back when things were just beginning to go wrong.

Laurie hadn't looked away by the time Jo found him again. She looked at him, then at the paintings, and then back at him again.

"What is it?" she asked. Funny, how she'd taken a week to ask that question.

"Amy isn't dead," Laurie answered, "We've both seen her."

Jo shut her eyes as though she were in pain, but then she nodded and looked straight at him.

"I've been thinking about that," she said.

"Really? You haven't seemed as if you've been thinking about much of anything lately, Jo. Not of what happened, and not of me."

"Maybe there's a career for me in acting after all.” Jo wandered over to the bookshelf, where she started to scan titles, taking down the ones that she liked, or that she knew him to like. "I can't think of anything else," she admitted.

Laurie wanted to touch Jo. The words changed her, and made her look tired. Laurie did reach out, but only to brush against her arm, as he took from her the book she was currently holding.

"I don't want any of these," he said, softly.

"I _have_ wanted to speak to you," Jo said, her voice low and confidential, as though she thought someone else might be listening.

"It's not as if I didn't give you any chance. You've seen enough of me, Jo.” Laurie tried to look angry with Jo, but she was too close for him to manage it. If only she had been standing across the room he could have shouted at her, and made her know just how much he had felt her neglect. It was better that she wasn't, really, for it was shameful for him to want so much more from her than she was willing to give currently -- shameful, and pitiful.

"I know. I've been terrible to you," Jo said. Laurie had to take her hand, to keep her for once again reaching out for his books.

"If you've known then, why…" Laurie cleared his throat abruptly, fighting to keep the emotion from his voice, and when he continued on more he spoke more harshly than before. "I want to know what's been going on with you. Why have you been acting as if everything is still normal, when you know that it isn't?"

Jo appeared to be looking Laurie over for some time, no doubt taking in the wrinkled state of his clothing, and the rough beard which had been growing over two days of neglect.

"I think we must have no secrets between us from now on," she said.

Laurie turned, and rested his head in his arms against his bookshelf, and laughed. Of course, it had taken Jo over a week to come to this conclusion, even when they were, as far as he could tell, alone together in a predicament that held their lives and sanities in the balance. Because, somehow, no matter how strong their bond, and no matter how long a friendship Laurie could claim with her, no one was more wary of him than Jo March. That wariness had begun almost as soon as he'd started to see her as a woman, and nothing could undo it -- marrying and loving her sister hadn't made her let down her guard around him, watching that sister die hadn't been enough, and Laurie suspected now that she had put thought into her little speech than she would have into facing death head on. When he looked up again, her arms were crossed, and she wore a funny expression of annoyance and worry which would have made him hate her, had anything been capable of driving him to that.

"Go on then," he said. "Sit down. You have quite a few secrets at the moment, don't you?"

In spite of his accusatory tone, Jo made no argument, but flopped down in his arm chair. "I do," she said. "More than I know what to do with, and as far as I can see, you're the only person I can tell. At least you're the only one who might benefit from them, instead of being harmed."

"Go on," Laurie said again, gentling in spite of himself.

Jo reached into her apron pocket, and handed him a worn and folded sheet of paper, without quite meeting his eyes.

"You'll have to forgive me… I know how stupid it sounds, the way I wrote it," she said, holding his hands firmly over the paper, so that he could not open it just yet. "I wrote it months ago, when Beth was only just buried, and you were still gallivanting about Europe, getting into lord only knows what trouble."

Laurie waited until Jo’s hand fell away, before leaning against the arm of her chair, and beginning to read. It was a letter, addressed to Teddy, and dated only days before he had gone to comfort Amy in Nice. Half a year had not passed since the letter had been written, yet he could not but feel that, had it been delivered, it would have reached an infinitely younger version of himself.

He could feel Jo's eyes upon him as he read the letter a second time. She'd written of seeing a girl at her window, one that looked like Beth; She'd described the girl just as Amy had. Laurie envisioned Jo alone in her attic, dressed only in her nightgown as she'd been the night he followed her into the woods, her pen moving furiously over the paper. She had been afraid when she'd written that letter, and she had tried to drive away that fear with the idea of him.

"You should have sent it," he said.

"Didn't see what good would come of it at the time."

"I would have come home," he said.

Jo scoffed at that, or perhaps just at the way he was looking at her.

"It's better that you didn't. It would have interrupted your courting. And then maybe you would have never had…" Jo gestured vaguely at the room that they were sitting, but Laurie could only look at it and think of how badly he had failed both Amy and himself, and from the way Jo looked away from him, he suspected she knew. "There's no way of telling," Jo continued with a sigh. "Maybe sending the letter would have changed the timing enough to set everything to rights, or maybe the day of our deaths is set as soon as we're born, and we would've lost Amy no matter what else we did. I doubt sending the letter would have stopped this illness from happening, so someone would have had to die."

"Amy saw the same girl when she was ill," Laurie said.

"Aren't you seeing her now?" Jo asked.

Laurie leaned in closer to Jo. "Amy's been here every night since she died," he said, his eyes widening as Jo’s did. It felt nearly good to say it, to know that at the very least he was able to say it. "I don't think she's dead at all."

"Oh, she's dead, absolutely. We watched it, and then we buried her, but…" Jo's words came to an abrupt stop as Laurie placed his hands on both sides of her face, holding her so that she would have to hear and understand him, before subjecting them both to her own version of reality.

"You saw her," he said. Jo was so close that he could feel her breathing, and somehow this and the way her face took up the whole of his vision reminded him of the day he'd told her he loved her. "She looked at us. She was wearing a bloody dress, and I've seen her every night since."

Laurie was begging for her help, though he never said the word. Jo jerked her face away, but as she was pulling his hands off of her, she stopped, and grasped them tightly.

"She's trying to warn us," Jo said. She sounded just as desperate as Laurie felt."Don't say anything more about her just yet, but answer my question and see if you agree with what I have to say. Have you seen the the girl with Beth’s face yet?"

Laurie shook his head.

"Teddy, she's the evilest thing to ever walk this earth. I'd bet anything on it. And Amy… She can't have meant to hurt us, else she would've done it when she had the chance. I think she's trying to protect us somehow and…"

"Did you look at her?" Laurie almost shouted. It wasn't that Jo's explanation didn't make sense. It did, in a roundabout way, but she was wrong just the same. Amy was after him. She didn't only want to hurt him, she wanted to drag him to his grave.

Jo paused there, and bit her lip, thinking.

"I don't think….So many people died that night. If she'd been lovely and comforting, we mightn't have ran as we did, and then we'd be dead too."

Jo held tighter on to Laurie's hands, looking straight at him as she spoke, as if everything she said was a statement of mere fact. And it was a nice idea to believe that his dear wife had swooped down from heaven to warn them, and it he was tempted to hold on to her fragile words but….

"She had fangs, Jo. And blood. She was covered in blood. Where could it have come from, if not from the people who were killed?"

"Maybe," Jo faltered, and would have let go of his hands had he not kept his grip tight against her. "If she's a ghost, maybe she can appear however she wishes. Or," Jo swallowed hard. For the first time Laurie noticed how bright her eyes were. "Or maybe ghosts haven't any choice but to… appear in a way that… that's related somehow to how they died."

"Or maybe she isn't a ghost." Laurie hated himself for saying it, but it was not something that could go unspoken, and even as he despised what he had to say, he found his words came faster and faster. "She looked solid! When she knocks on my windows and doors at night, I swear her hands are every bit as solid as yours are now! We have to find out for certain. We have to go to her grave -- not at night, never at night, mind you -- and we have to open…"

Jo jerked away from him with such force that the chair moved backwards with her. She jumped to her feet, with an expression that he'd never seen on her before.

"Have you lost your mind?"

"I don't know. I'm sure I will if we don't find out what's happening soon."

"Her--- you'll open the coffin and her face will be gone," Jo said. "That's what happens after you die. Your skin rots, the worms eat away at your body, your eyes shrivel up, and your hair and fingernails keep growing through it all."

As if this prophetic burst was too much for her, Jo turned from Laurie and dashed up the stairs, returning only several minutes later, clutching a bag of his clothing.

"Let’s go to your grandfather's house now," Jo said, and something told Laurie that now was not the time to try and reason with her, that doing anything other than following her would undo them.

Jo bypassed the stable where Laurie’s carriage and horse were kept, deciding apparently that it would be better for them to walk. He followed. The sun was bright enough to make his head hurt, and the first fifteen minutes of the walk was spent in ghastly silence. Jo walked just ahead of him, carrying his bag, and refusing to so much as look back at him.

Ten minutes later she slowed her pace so that she was in step with him, and a few minutes after that Laurie felt her slip her hand into his. He looked over to see what had made her do it.

"I have an idea," she said as they walked, her eyes remaining fixed on the path before them.

He listened.

"We can leave flowers on her grave before the sun sets tonight. If she's…. in the habit of moving out of it… then she'll have to throw the flowers aside when she gets out. If they stay where they are, then at least we'll know that whatever you've been seeing is a spirit and not a…."

"Body," he finished, for she didn't sound as if she'd be able to. "We could do that. It makes sense I suppose."

"Well, it's not as though we can do the… other thing you suggested. So we'll have to do this."

They fell into silence again, Laurie privately unsure as to whether Jo's idea could tell them any of what they needed to know, and Jo looking grave and worried. She remained close beside him, and whatever Laurie's doubts and worries, her hand in his felt like a talisman against the evil unfolding around them.

\----------

They went to Amy's grave some hours later. Jo had been there many times already , both alone and with her family, but not since the funeral had she stood in this spot with Laurie at her side. She didn't look over at him, but she could feel him next to her, his height and his warmth, his worry, which was an echo of her own. Never before had she thought to regard a grave with suspicion. Amy's headstone was white and smooth still, and when she had first been buried, it had been among the newest at the town cemetery. Now hers was just one of many plots where the grass had not yet had time to grow and cover the freshly turned earth. Jo regarded each detail, wondering if any of them were unusual, and telling herself that they most firmly weren't.

Laurie knelt down to place his bouquet by the headstone, with a solemnity that comforted Jo after all of the terrible things he had said earlier. Jo waited for him to stand, and then did the same, but she kept a single white rose to place atop Beth's grave, for she couldn't forget her girl, no matter what the circumstances.

Jo and Laurie departed then, not a word having passed between them. Not until they reached their homes did Jo break the silence, to whisper a dinner invitation from Marmee. Laurie nodded, and Jo wished she could go back in time, to when they'd teased and played together.

Perhaps it was merely her memories of the past at work, but as Jo watched Laurie walk towards his grandfather's home with a heavy tread, she was seized with the urge to go to him and tell him just how dear he was to her, and what a fine friend she still thought him. She'd lost two of the people she loved most in the world in the span of a few months, and she could no longer keep faith that the others would stay safely by her side where they belonged. Laurie took another step away, and then Jo gave chase, taking hold of his arm from behind in a way she had not done for a long time.

Laurie spun around as though he would embrace her then and there, but Jo stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"You should put on a clean collar before you come over," she said. "And if you don't shave, you'll give me no choice but to try and divest you of that scruff of yours with a butter knife over dinner."

The half smile Laurie managed at that made Jo glad she'd said it, even if it hadn't been enough.

Jo woke early the next morning, mostly on account of her sleep being too light and fitful to keep hold on her through the daylight hours. She'd spent the night curled up with her blankets covering her eyes. She was beginning to become so used to the girl’s staring, that on some nights she could just about ignore it, even if on other nights fear made her want to crawl out of her skin.

She knocked on the door of Laurie's grandfather's home soon after dressing, but found that Laurie was still asleep. She decided that she would return to his house to pick up his books; even if he protested that he was too tired for them. The idea of Laurie having more of his own things around him was comforting to Jo, and she didn't think it could hurt him much at any rate. Besides, she needed the walk, if she didn't want to spend the day in a sleepy, miserable stupor.

When Jo was finished at Laurie's home, she told herself with a shiver, she would go back to the cemetery to see what had become of the flowers. As it turned out, however, she had no need to go any farther than Laurie's doorstep.

The two bouquets lay side by side in front of his porch, the flowers wilted but unmistakable. Jo lifted one of them, browning petals scattering as she did so. Amy's wedding ring lay beneath it.


	12. Chapter 12

Late afternoon found Laurie and Jo seated together on the steps of the March family porch. Marmee had left to shop for some necessary items, and Jo's father was reading, shut-up in his study. Amy's wedding ring lay cold against Laurie's open palm, and he could not but think that it heralded the end as surely as the death-marks that kept appearing upon people's necks and wrists. If they did not represent the end of a life, then they represented end of Laurie’s belief in the sanctity of life, death, and the veil that separated the two.

"I feel as though everything ought to be stormy and dark," said Jo, who was usually the first to speak, even in the worst of situations. "Dark, as in a nightmare, or a proper horror story. And we shouldn't live in nice cheerful houses as we do, but foreboding mansions on the edge of the English moors. In fact, we shouldn't be involved at all. We're not really the sort for this kind of tale."

"You'd know better than I do," Laurie said. He felt dull, but not as much as he had the day before. Amy had failed to visit him at his grandfather's house, and he'd slept heavily through the night and late into the morning. Jo, if anything, looked more worn than usual, and it made Laurie feel lost to look at her. Everything he had done since graduating from college, he reflected, had root in either Jo or Amy. All of his efforts had gone towards fleeing from or loving each of them in turn, and now was no different. The more he feared Amy, the more he felt for and needed Jo. And he needed her to be herself -- as active, decisive, and bold as she had always been.

"What are we to do now?" she asked, and his image of her shattered just a little bit more.

"Dig up the grave, and look inside," he said, and waited for her to panic at the idea as she had the day before.

She didn't. Her expression didn't even change.

"When? There will be other people about the cemetery during the day, and we can't go by night."

"We could go over, and wait until all's clear and…"

Jo looked up at him. "If we're caught in the act, what will you tell your grandfather?"   
Jo wasn't arguing with Laurie, not precisely, only asking what needed to be asked, and what he could find no answer for. Absently, he plucked at the blades of grass which had grown high next to the steps, beheading them for lack of anything else to do or say.

"I think too much," Jo said. "Sometimes I wish my mind would rest for a bit, so that the other parts of me could."

Laurie waited for her to continue, only speaking after the passage of time made it clear that she would not go on without his prompting.

"What do you think about?"

"Beth, a lot of the time. Towards the end I had to take care of everything for her. She used to get sores on her legs, from time to time. But she was ill before she ever had them, and she didn't go mad as Amy did. They didn't even look like Amy's marks."

"Jo.” Laurie swung around so that he was facing her, even if she wasn't looking at him just then. "What do we know about the marks?"

"Nothing."

He gripped her hands. "Don't tell me that's the best you can come up with."

"Fine, then. We know that everyone who gets them dies, and that anybody can get them."

"We know that they're unpredictable," Laurie said, holding onto Jo all the tighter. "A majority of them are on the neck, yes, but they've shown up everywhere on the body. Some have gone mad from them, others have gone silent, and others haven't changed at all. Some have lingered for weeks with the illness, and others have died in a matter of days. Others have simply been ripped to shreds without ever becoming ill."

"You think Beth had it then?"

"She might have," Laurie said. He didn't even feel terrible about saying it, because Jo looked resigned, and he could believe that she had come to that conclusion on her own.

"This isn't an illness," Jo said. "It's something new entirely. And perhaps, rather than killing it does… something else. But I can't wrap my head around it. Not everyone who has died can be terrorizing the living as Amy does. Somebody other than the two of us would have seen them."

"It's not as if we'd know what anybody else is seeing," Laurie pointed out. "What if every one is as quiet as we are?"

Jo groaned; Laurie wanted take that sound, and shake it out of her.

"Then let's shout all of our secrets from the rooftops, and see if being put in an asylum is any better than being chased about by our dead relatives. I'd do it, if I didn't have Marmee and Father to think of."

There was something close to despair in her tone, and that frightened Laurie more than anything else.

"We'll fix this," Laurie promised, though he hadn't the faintest idea how. For Jo, and with Jo, he could come up with something.

"We?" Jo smiled at this, but Laurie wasn't sure that he liked the look of it. "I do want to solve this. I feel as I did when I was young, and I wanted to go to war with my father, even knowing how ghastly it was. I'd do it still, but with people, you know just how to fight, and what you're fighting. I've half a mind to strike out blindly and see what I can do, but---"

And she looked up at Laurie, seeming to know that he would tell her not to.

"I'm not quite alone yet, so I'd better not," she finished.

"So, what will we do then?" Laurie knew that it was unfair to turn Jo’s question back on her, when she'd asked it herself only minutes before, and had no reason of being any closer to an answer.

She looked down at her hands, folded now in her lap. The world around them was awake and alive with danger, and yet everything looked so very normal. On the trees, the tips of the leaves were beginning to turn yellow and orange with the first hints of autumn. The flowers on in Amy's old patch of the garden were beginning to look ragged in anticipation of the coming cold, and Jo-- Jo was no longer a wild girl who could make everything better and brighter through willing it to be, but a woman with her hair pinned up severely, and an apron tied over her thick skirts.

Laurie opened his palm to look again at the wedding ring that he was holding, and between that and his vision of Jo, he thought he would die if he didn't find some shamble of his life worth salvaging, and quickly.

Jo shifted as if to rise, and Laurie wondered if she would just walk away from him.

"Don't," he said.

"I was going to get some paper. I thought writing everything down might help us puzzle this out."

She was looking at him as if she found something in his countenance very strange indeed, and he had no intention of making her think otherwise just then.

He reached out for her hair, running his hand through it so that a long strand of it could tumble free.

"I hate this," he said.

"… you hate my hair?" Jo asked. She ducked her head away, but not before Laurie had divested her of a few more pins.

"No, but your hair, it's…"

He didn't want to explain, not really, nor did he think that he could, and so he returned to the task of removing each pin until her long hair tumbled haphazardly down her shoulders. To his surprise she made no further protest, and even helped him in the end, as if he were moving too slowly for her taste.

"Is that what you were going for?" she asked, with something of her old annoyance.

"Well you've always had your say whenever I've cut mine, so it only seemed fair to me that…"

Laurie couldn't look at her as he spoke, something about what he’d said making him feel like the young boy who had always had more than he deserved, yet been incapable of ever getting the things that he truly wanted. Jo’s next words were a blow, and only served to make him glad that he hadn't seen her face before she said them.

"You can cut your hair if you want to. I don't really care one way or the other anymore."

"Good to know," Laurie said. His throat was tight, and his fist was tight around that forsaken ring, and surely Jo would leave him at any moment…

She didn't . She sat stiffly beside him, and after a few minutes she raked her hand through her hair.

Then she kissed him. It was the last thing he would have ever expected from her, and yet she did it, her lips pressed against his. It was not a long kiss, and her arms remained at her sides as if she didn't quite know what she was supposed to do with them, even as he reached up to cup her face. Her finish was abrupt, and only his hands were left to linger on her shoulders. He leaned in for another kiss, and she looked ready to accept it, but she turned her face to the side at the last moment so that his lips only brushed her cheek.

"We still have to decide what we're going to do now," Jo said. She took a deep breath, as though to compose herself. "I'll get some paper and pens, and we'll map out a plan -- any plan, no matter how ridiculous it is, and we'll set things to rights that way."


	13. Chapter 13

Upon reaching her attic, Jo did not go immediately to her desk to retrieve her quill and writing paper, but instead stood straight with her back pressed against the door, as if to keep the rest of the world out. She ran a nervous hand through her hair, trying to repress the feeling that she had just done something very stupid.

She _had_ , of course. Kissing Laurie had been nothing short of idiotic. Jo was smart enough to recognize when she behaved badly, and she scolded herself as she rummaged through her desk for her things. In the few hours that had passed since she found Amy's ring, she had managed to conjure up a year's worth of gruesome possibilities, which rendered her frantic and listless in turns. Certainly it didn't help matters that Laurie thought he could escape from the situation they'd found themselves in by freeing her hair, or that she'd began to wonder what parts of him could help her think of something, anything other than dead sisters, who could apparently rise and walk again. Jo would have to be sure to keep Laurie’s mind and her own trained on the problem at hand from this point on, or else risk doing harm to them both.

Laurie was waiting when at last Jo made it back outside. He shifted over so that she would have room to sit beside him on the steps. This time, Jo left just a little more distance between the two of them than there had been before.

"Jo," Laurie said, and his voice was gentle in a particular way that she hadn't heard in a very long time. She didn't dare look at his face. "Why did you…?"

"Too much is happening right now," Jo said, determined that that should be the end of it. She dipped her pen in her inkwell, hoping that it really was mightier than the sword, as the saying went, and that it would be enough to fend off the worst of her feelings, and Laurie’s as well. At first she wasn't quite sure of what to write, but a quick glance at Laurie and the obvious frustration on his face spurred her on, and she began to compose a list in short hand of everything strange that had befallen them, from Beth's death onward.

The first time Laurie tried to interrupt her, by placing his hand on her arm, Jo fended him off with the insistence that he would make her forget something important if he tried to speak to her just then.

By the second time Laurie interrupted her, Jo was at exactly the point where she least wanted to hear his voice, for she was in the midst of recording Amy's ravings.

"Have you ever read Carmilla?"

"Haven't heard of it," Jo said, setting the pen down at her side. She decided it was safe to look at him then, for he was only speaking of a book.

"It was the sort of thing that the fellows at school used to pass about," he said, coloring just enough to let Jo know that this Carmilla was the worst sort of publication. Laurie cleared his throat. "About two girls who were lovers," he finished. Jo could feel his eyes upon her, and knew he was searching her for some reaction.

"Do I need to write this down?" she asked.

"It wouldn't hurt."

"Tell me about this book," Jo said. She wrote the title in bold lettering to make up for the blush from could feel rising on her face.

"I don't remember it very well…"

"Only the part about the girl lovers." Jo frowned, thinking at once that she should have whispered those last two words, instead of speaking them aloud as she had. She shifted uncomfortably, then rested her head in her hands with a short laugh that felt as if it came from outside of her. "I'll scold you for this later," she said. "You can count on that. For now I only hope that you've something instructive to tell me about the book, and you're not unloading your secrets on me for the sake of seeing how I'll react."

"All right," Laurie said. "Since I haven't got the book on hand, and I'm not sure how I'd go about finding it, I'll tell you the story. At the start, there's a girl living alone with her father in Eastern Europe… She hasn't got much in the way of company, until a caravan crashes. Another girl -- Carmilla -- is hurt, so her 'family' leaves her behind with the girl and her father. Soon people are dying all over the village,"

"With marks on their necks?" Jo guessed.

"I don't remember anything about that," Laurie admitted. "But as Carmilla and the other girl become more and more… intimate… the girl starts to suffer from a wasting illness. And here's the part that I can't stop thinking of -- Eventually the girl's father goes during the day to dig up the grave of some countess who had died a hundred years before. He opens the coffin, and finds Carmilla's body looking hale, hearty, and absolutely bathed in blood."

Jo suppressed a shudder at the thought; She'd written gruesome things herself during her time in New York, but with all that she had seen since then, images such as the one Laurie had just described had a much stronger effect upon her than they ever had in the past.

"It was only a story," Jo said, but she was already writing down the details of it. She felt something akin to excitement or revulsion deep in her stomach. "The key to all this has to be in blood," she said. "Whatever we're dealing with is draining the blood from the living -- feeding perhaps, or maybe it just enjoys it -- there's no way of knowing for sure. What did they do with Carmilla after they found her?

"They beheaded her, I think."

Now this was almost too much for Jo.

"I only want this to stop," she said.

Laurie's hand had found its way to Jo's hair again, and she shook it off. She wanted so badly to do something. Never before had she been content to sit helpless in the face of danger, and she could not abide by it now.

"Tomorrow morning I'm going to Amy's grave just before sun rise," Jo said abruptly. "This will go on forever if something isn't done. I'll bring the knife, and my father's pistol if I can get hold of it without him noticing, and anything else I can think of to protect myself. If I don't see her, I'll dig or do whatever I must to make sure she is where she ought to be."

She searched Laurie for any trace of horror such as she'd felt when he had first proposed unearthing Amy.

"We either do this, or we spend forever talking in circles about ideas and theories that we don't know a thing about," Jo continued, knowing even if Laurie wasn't disgusted by her, Marmee would be if she ever found out.

Laurie nodded slowly. "We'll go together," he said, in a way that made Jo's heart sink.

"I suppose we'll have to," she agreed, and the answer did not satisfy her in the least.

 

* * *

 

Laurie was the first one outside at four AM, and the two minutes spent standing by the large tree where he and Jo had agreed to meet were among the longest he had ever experienced. They were worse, even, than lying in his bed, surrounded by Amy's voice, and Amy's malice, for at those times at least he only thought of his own safety. Now, though the night was quiet and deceptively benign, Laurie could not be sure if he was waiting for Jo, or if she'd come before him and been dragged away in the minute he'd spent looking for his shoes.

That is why he took her hand upon seeing her, without any awkwardness or hesitation. Even when she put her finger to her lips to remind him to be silent, he could not quite be angry with her for the kiss that had passed between them that afternoon, or how dismissive she'd been after. The possibility of danger in every rustle of the wind was enough to put things into perspective.

Jo patted a small brown bag that hung against her hips as they set off; She'd remembered her weapons, and Laurie had his as well. She had dressed for the morning, but she looked disheveled, and -- Laurie realized, with something akin to satisfaction -- fierce. He could almost believe that they both would survive this.

The walk to the cemetery took about an hour when the sun was shining, but they walked quickly now. There were no screams this evening, and no howling. They did not even encounter any animals as they walked.

"The girl wasn't at my window tonight," Jo whispered at one point, as if she could not help but say it. Otherwise, they moved in silence.

The night seemed to thicken as they reached the graveyard, though it was actually lighter there, the moonlight unobscured by trees, and casting long shadows when it fell against the tombstones. In the east, the sky was beginning to take on a dull grey color that meant the sun would rise soon.

Laurie could not quite imagine any ghosts rising from the peaceful ground on which they tread, and if there were any monsters present, it was he and Jo for what they planned to do.

When they'd reached Amy's grave, however, it turned out that they did not need to do anything.

Grass and flowers had been uprooted in that little plot of land, the earth having been opened and spread out over the other nearby graves, Beth's included. Amy's coffin was empty and visible, the cover having been torn off it.


	14. Chapter 14

They had agreed that, after looking at Amy's grave, they would wait until a reasonable hour to return to their respective homes. Even when they had first discussed the idea, Laurie had known that it would be difficult, that they would be tired and possibly dirty, and that surely whatever they saw would disturb them. It had been Jo's insistence that they leave notes for their family's, and try to make it look as though they'd only woken at sunrise, and gone out on legitimate business.

"I almost hope Marmee doesn't believe any note I leave her," Jo had explained. "I hate to have her think I'm doing something good when I'm behaving wickedly. She'll never suspect anything as bad as what we're really up to, at least, but she's sure to think we've come to harm if I don't plant another idea in her head."

Laurie had not chosen to point out to her, at that time, that there was a good chance that they would come to great harm, and that their loved ones would surely have to deal with the aftermath. Instead, he had forced himself to believe that somehow they would be spared the fate that had befallen so many others who had been stupid enough to leave their homes at night.

Now, however, as he followed a grave and silent Jo into a shop to engage in a charade of buying fabric and thread, it seemed to Laurie nothing short of miraculous that they were both alive.

Not only that -- they were both alive, they were both unscathed, and nothing had happened. They had not seen Amy, or the girl that Jo spoke of. They had not been torn to shreds, or marked for death. They hadn't seen blood, been haunted by ghosts, or even stared into a corpse's lifeless eyes.

It was damn anticlimactic in a way, if stumbling upon a grave robbing when about to commit one could ever be called that. And it had not given them any answers, but instead left them as they had been at the start -- helpless and unknowing, their only choices being to do nothing, or to strike out at random.

Jo seemed inclined towards the later, as they left the tailor shop, and moved on to their next errand.

"I'm tired of taking care of the home, while people around me are sick and dying," she said, handing him her shopping bag with more force than was strictly necessary. "How am I to go home and do the… the washing up, and sewing, and every other stupid task that I'm bound to after this?"

"How am I to go home and pour over Grandfather's business figures?" Laurie shot back. He found he had to hasten his step to keep up with Jo.

"If everyone were to give up their work until the plague has passed, then things would be worse than they are now."

"We're rather in the center of it though, don't you think? I doubt anyone would blame us for neglecting our household duties if they knew but one half of what we've seen, " Laurie pointed out.

Jo gave him a frantic look at that. They had agreed that they would not say a thing about Amy while out together, and though Laurie thought he had been more than vague enough to avoid any accusations, Jo clearly had other ideas.

Somebody, other then them, would have to visit the graveyard before the day was through, and whoever it was would surely notice the great hole in the earth where Amy had once lay, and wonder what had happened. He didn't want to see how Mrs. March would react to finding her beloved daughter had been dug out from her final resting place, and certainly he didn't want her to think that he or Jo had had anything to do with it, even if they almost had.

Nonetheless, though Laurie knew that Jo's silence was entirely rational, it weighed heavily on him by the time they reached home.

"I have to go to Marmee now," she said, and however apologetic she sounded, it did not keep Laurie from thinking that she was a fool who had no idea of how important she was to him just then, and how he needed her. It was not the same way he had needed her when they were young, and he had mistakenly endowed her with all of his dearest and most tender feelings. No, it was not love that he felt now, but a need to seek understanding, and have another person by his side as he did so. He did not think that he could fight the shadow that had fallen over their lives alone, and though he could not yet say it out loud, it was only when Jo was near that he did not feel helpless entirely.

It was only the knowledge that for everything he had lost, Jo's mother and father had lost double, that allowed Laurie turn his back on her for the day, as she already had on him.

 

* * *

 

Hannah had Jo in a crushing embrace the moment she opened the door. Jo found herself holding her back awkwardly, trying to keep her from feeling the weaponry that still hung at her side.

"What's happened?" Jo asked. Her voice sounded different than she remembered it -- deeper, and more world weary. She thought she could guess pretty well what had Hannah so upset, but that didn't stop the pang of fear that something more had happened to her family since she had gone out that morning.

A moment later, and Hannah was going on about Amy, the poor child, and Jo could feel the blood rushing back into her face.

"Wait a moment," Jo said in way of response. "I've just bought a bolt of new fabric, and I want to put it in my room."

Hannah gave her the oddest look at that, and though Jo knew that she had sounded dismissive, she wasn't sure that she could manage any better. She was so tired, and unready for the conversation ahead of her. She was in and out of her room as quickly as possible, after stowing her knives under her bed, and casting a regretful glance at Beth's, for her angel sister seemed farther away than ever just now.

Marmee looked composed when Jo found her, sitting in the living room with her hands folded in her lap… utterly composed, except for the far away look in her eyes that Jo realized had to be pain. Sitting down beside her, and taking her hand, Jo wondered if the cost of this seeming calm was too dear for her mother, if one could be outwardly strong while something within was being destroyed utterly.

"Hannah said that something had happened to Amy," Jo said, as if she didn't all ready know more details than Marmee could ever guess. To her relief, she didn't sound flustered. Either she was proving a quick learner in this new art of lying, or she was too exhausted to worry what came out of her mouth any longer.

"Amy is no where to be found," Marmee said. "Her grave was.. desecrated in the night."

Jo could hear the rage in each softly spoken syllable, rage that Jo herself would not have been able to master, but then Marmee had more practice in such things than Jo did.

"I don't believe it was a human that did it," Jo said, certain that Marmee would never guess just how much she meant those words.

"This is a bad time, my dear." Marmee said. She turned to face Jo with a fondness and care that had an element of ferocity to it. "And people become worse than animals, thinking that God has abandoned them entirely. He hasn't. He watches over us still, and you must strive to be better, and help those who have lost their way."

At that Marmee stood and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a newspaper which she put in Jo's lap.

In the past, Jo had always looked forward to Concord's city newspaper, which had been a source of amusing advice and local happenings, spiced with a fair amount of fiction and editorial. Lately, it had taken a turn into the macabre, and the obituaries took up more pages than the section devoted to local poetry ever had.

Amy had not yet made the news, but that did not mean that the paper was free of people that Jo knew…or had known, as the case was. Apparently, Meg's friend Sallie Moffat had been struck ill unawares, and her insanity had been a violent one. She was known to have ripped open her husband's neck with her teeth in broad daylight, and before a group of stunned witnesses, including their own children. Both were dead now. Marks had been discovered on Sallie's neck and on her thighs.

"She calls on Meg nearly every week!" Jo exclaimed, her heart leaping to her throat when she thought of what might have befallen her one remaining sister, and wishing she could run to her home and take an immediate survey of her health and well-being. "Or she did. She shan't any longer. If I have my way, nobody shall outside of our family."

"I had a similar thought," Marmee admitted. "But surely you're aware that people have taken such measures in the course of every great plague, and it has rarely done any good."

Jo turned the page of the paper, her hand shaking and whiter than before. More death, it seemed, in every headline, though none could quite match Sallie's in violence. Towards the end she saw an article detailing the effort to keep the contamination from spreading beyond Concord. The necks of men and women were being checked at the train station, and at the city limits, and the infected were being detained inside their homes, sometimes alone if no one would condescend to care for them.

"This is the world we live in now, Jo," Marmee said, taking her hand once more. "And we must face it bravely if we are to have any hope of withstanding it. We must be grateful that we are healthy in this household, and that Meg and her family are healthy as well."

"I am, and I will be," Jo answered, for she'd always responded to Marmee's advice in just such a manner, since she'd been old enough to speak and to listen. And as she always had, she tried to take this advice to heart, though she feared that her heart was sickened by all that she knew, all that she didn't know, and all that she was becoming capable of.

Still, Jo was not so wrung out that nothing Marmee said had any effect of her. Later that day, when she found herself alone, and wanting to shed a few very natural tears, she instead shook herself hard and forced herself to do her duty around the house. She did not nap, or run across the yard to confide in Laurie, but helped Marmee prepare a basket to bring over to the Moffat children, and joined her for the journey. The little boy and girl were not much older than Daisy and Demi, but sat together unspeaking in a way that went straight to Jo's heart.

It was not until nearly evening that Jo let herself doze over her knitting, for she could not help it. A knock at the door roused her before she could truly begin, and as it was not yet dark, she went to answer it.


	15. Chapter 15

Ever since the day Jo March had left New York, Professor Friedrich Bhaer had hoped -- nay, _known_ \-- that one evening he would find himself standing at her doorstep in Concord, just as he was doing presently. He had never suspected that he would find himself there under such bleak circumstances, or believed that he would have to break every promise he had made to himself over the past decade in order to come; It had been a difficult decision, and what pained him most was that he could not yet be sure that he had made it for the correct reasons.

Love, he knew, was what guided him— love for humanity and the American society that had accepted him into its fold so easily, care for the suffering of the people of Concord, and a strong affection and desire to protect one resident in particular. Nonetheless, he knew that moderation was important in all earthly matters, and giving over the whole of his heart to anything other than his Heavenly Father could quickly turn his passions to hatred, and cause a peril as sure as the creatures they were facing. If only there was another nearby with such knowledge as he had, he would not have dreamt of coming, for his mission was such a thing as could doom an innocent with one misstep.

If not for Jo, and the hope that no evil would touch her, Bhaer may still have convinced himself that there was little that he could do, and struggled to be satisfied with the ordinary acts of modest goodness, such as all humans were capable of. He may have occupied himself with caring for his nephews in New York, while something worse than pestilence waged on so nearby.

The door of the March home creaked open. At once Bhaer perceived the many changes in the young woman behind it. Jo was thinner than she had been when last he saw her. She stood for several seconds, watching him through the sliver of open door. The corners of her mouth twitched, as though they may turn upward, if she would only allow it. It was a common thing, among those who lived amongst demonic specters, to be unable to trust in the visit of an unexpected friend. In an instant, Bhaer recalled the women of Styria and the Zorzanian states, who had learned to treat each moment of the day with caution, and were always looking over their shoulders for the devil to appear. The impression passed as soon as Jo smiled, but it was not something which Bhaer would soon forget, and he prayed that it would give him the fortitude to pursue what lay ahead of him.

"Oh, I can't believe it!" Jo said, looking Bhaer over, for his visage seemed to rouse her a little. "You should never have come, but it's good to see you just the same."

With that she ushered him inside and locked the door behind him, giving it a good shake to make sure that it would stay shut through the night.

"It's nearing sunset," she explained, “and such things have been happening as you wouldn't believe, though I'm sure you've seen something of it in print. The New York papers do have a way of publishing the most dire situations the world over…"

Jo’s tiredness, as she said this, was not lost on Bhaer.

"You are correct in thinking I have been reading of all that goes on here, and much worried by it," he said. He watched her closely, and seeing no reaction, he ventured to add, “Knowing a dear friend was in the center of it left me with no ease of mind till I came."

"Well, now I've got yet another dear friend in the center of it. You mustn't stay long, for it's more dangerous than you can guess."

Jo nodded, as if she knew all about danger, and though Bhaer suspected that she had been made to learn a great deal about it lately, he also knew that she had not yet spent ten years of her life studying and fighting to overcome the nosefaratu, as he had.

"You must tell me of all the details of it," he said, as if he could not guess good and well what had been happening. Jo had taken his hands, and after a moment she embraced him, something which gave him great solace, for it made him think both about the hearty affection of his homeland, and his growing feelings toward her. Though Jo pulled away quickly, with a physical reserve that was purely American, Bhaer had by this time already resolved that he must risk and limb for her sake, if need be.

"I will," Jo said. "I'll tell you everything I can, and chase you away with it. You haven't any choice but to stay here until morning, when it becomes safe to travel again. You'll have to take the early train out of here."

"Ach, it can not be! I have an obligation to be here for at least a week, and no option of breaking it.”

Jo looked at Bhaer carefully. He stepped slightly in front of the heavy that he had deposited at his feet, and which carried all of the equipment that would be necessary for the hunt. Jo’s eyes did not fall on it, thank god, but the look of awareness and curiosity that she wore was unnerving. This, Bhaer had not noticed before in New York, and yet it did not seem new or unnatural on her.

"What sort of obligation?" Jo asked. "Not for your work or your research, surely. Everything like that is at a standstill."

"There's somebody here who I need to look after.”

Jo looked away quickly, but Bhaer could not tell whether it was a sign of disfavor, a realization, or merely a reaction to the sound of footsteps somewhere else in the house.

"I should get my mother," Jo said, rather briskly. With that, she disappeared into the other room, calling out: "Marmee, Professor Bhaer is here from New York!"

 

* * *

 

An hour before midnight, and Jo found herself seated on the far side of the couch, talking to her Professor, as he sat at the other end. Marmee had seemed well pleased by Bhaer. She’d prepared a good supper for him, played some old airs on the piano, and somehow managed to be better and more merry than Jo would have thought possible under the circumstances. In fact, between Marmee and Father, Jo had found herself with little to do in the way of entertaining her new guest. Instead, she had been free to judge the proceedings as well as her sleeplessness and general excess of excitement would allow.

Something was off. Perhaps it was that Bhaer sat straighter than he had in New York, or that there was a tightness about his neck and shoulders that there hadn't been before. Perhaps it was that he did not bolt his food in the way Jo remembered, but seemed to lose himself in watching her between bites. Jo had never much liked being watched, and even knowing that Bhaer could never look upon her any way but kindly, just the fact that that he was _looking_ made her feel as if she'd forgotten to pin her hair up properly, or spilled gravy down her collar.

 _Of course he looks at me,_ Jo told herself harshly. _I'm the only one here that he knows, and I've barely spoken to him._

What this explanation did not neatly cover was why Marmee kept looking from him, to her, and smiling. Normally, Jo might have been oblivious to it, but worry for Marmee had made her prone to notice her every expression, and as things were, Jo could not miss the hope on her mother's face.

In the end, that hope was so confusing, and Jo was so tired, that she managed to convince herself and that she must ignore it for the time being, lest she ruin a good friendship with complicated notions. Professor Bhaer could not be allowed to stay long enough for anything to come to pass. This decided, Jo was able to relax, and she found she got on well enough from there.

"I haven't thought much about the Mrs. Kirke's or New York for months," Jo said, some time after her parents had left her and Bhaer to sit together, far later than normal propriety should have allowed. "Having you here is like I'm back there all over again. The only thing missing is the other boarders creaking up and down the stairs, and talking at all hours of the night."

"It is good to hear people run to and fro enjoying themselves as they should," Bhaer replied, his words thickened by that ever present accent, which Jo had missed so. "Too much quiet isn't good for man."

"Or for women! I'm longing to listen to a good human raucous outside. Now it’s always quiet, except for when the storms come.” Jo rested the side of her head against the back of the couch. She'd told Bhaer something grave already, and longed to go on, for it was so good to be able to tell some of her fears and none of her secrets to somebody who was not a part of her family.

"It is unearthly silent here. You must guard yourself from it."

"I do," Jo said, though she did not sit up, and could not imagine that she looked particularly guarded.

"In New York, you spoke always of your three sisters. You wrote me a letter saying that one was ill, and after you did not write again. Now I see that there is no one in this house but you and your good parents…"

Bhaer did not say another word, but his question was clear, and Jo winced at it.

"They aren't all dead," she said, straightening. "Meg is comfortably set up in her own little home, and hellfire on anything that tries to interfere with her."

If Bhaer was upset by this little speech, he did not show it, though Jo was a bit ashamed that she'd swore in such a matter. He reached into the pocket of his great, worn jacket, and produced something which shone in the scant light around them. Before Jo could look at it, he'd handed it to her.

"I brought this with me, as a gift for you,"

Once again Jo was aware that he was watching her, and so bent over the object in her hand, in order to avoid meeting his eyes.

It was a silver crucifix on a thick chain, ornamented only with a likeness of the suffering Christ. It was not delicate, as the ones that many girls wore to show off their wealth as much as their piety. It looked like a relic of sorts, a piece that was meant to be worn by an ancient monk, rather than a lady swanning off to church in her Sunday best.

"I've noticed that you don't wear one," Bhaer explained, "and thought this might give you hope in this, your time of need."

"Don't wear jewelry," Jo said. She didn't laugh, however, but held tight to the gift that had just been given to her. "As a girl, I got into too many scrapes for it. I couldn't put on a bracelet without smashing it or losing it somehow."

"I hope you shall wear this," Bhaer said.

Jo nodded, feeling she could not say more just then. She lifted it to her neck, and fumbled to fasten it behind her hair. Once closed, it hung heavily against her, like an embrace.

"I will, always," said Jo.

"May He always protect and keep you."

From that point, until the hour when Jo decided she must put herself to bed, not another word passed between the pair, for no words were needed.


	16. Chapter 16

Laurie awoke bright and early after his third night without Amy plaguing him. His arm dangled off the side of his twin bed, as if he had reached out for something in his sleep but fallen short. His legs reached to almost the end of the mattress. He knew that he had not, objectively, grown any taller or larger since leaving his grandfather's home, but his childhood room restricted him as it never had before. After so many years of imagining what sort of a man he might become. once he cast off the life Grandfather had set before him, not only had none of it come to pass, but in the end he'd found himself knocked back to where he had started.

At least he wasn't the only one.

Laurie rose, dressed, shaved, and all the while thought of very little other than going over to see Jo. She had changed in ways that he hadn't, as circumstances left her more and more bereft of the people she had always clung to, but she hadn't undergone the dramatic alterations in status and station that Laurie had. Laurie had been a boy, a student, a scorned lover, a lay-about, a husband, a man of business, and so much else. Jo had not been any of these things, and Laurie found that for the first time in half a decade he and she were as much alike as they had been when they first met.

If Jo was diminished, then Laurie was fallen. Laurie told himself that, as he made his way over to knock on her door and ponder their next steps on this path to nowhere.

Jo was still in bed. Peaking past Marmee, Laurie could see a strange man in spectacles sitting on her couch. The man nodded at him, and Laurie nodded back. Whomever he was, he wasn't the most distinctive of fellows. His most noticeable feature was that his clothes were a bit shabby — other than that, there was nothing worth studying about his face or manner.

"Jo is in bed," Marmee said, "but I'll tell her that you called."

"If she doesn't rise before noon, be sure to tease her about it for me," Laurie said, fully knowing that he would return again well before the message's designated hour.

Apparently Marmee did as well.

"Why not eat breakfast here," she suggested, "and acquaint yourself with our new guest? You can see Jo when she wakes."

"You're only inviting me in to save yourself the trip to and from the door every hour on the hour," Laurie said, smiling enough to tell Marmee that he knew what a nuisance he was being, and that he was grateful for her forbearance. He glanced again towards the stranger, and in light of Marmee's kindness, he resolved to be friendly towards him.

This was, of course, before he figured out who he was.

"Friedrich Bhaer," the man said, offering Laurie his hand.

Laurie took it, but could not help exclaiming, "Why, you're that man that Jo used to write about in her letters!"

Now, Laurie considered himself successful for having referred to Bhaer as "that man" rather than "that devilish professor", as he had in his mind ever since the first time Jo had mentioned him. Nonetheless, he was quite certain that he'd managed to sound more perturbed than he ought to have, and that Bhaer should not be shaking his hand and smiling as he was.

"I must be, yes,” Bhaer said, but from his expression he might as well have been saying: "Oh, how lovely of her to write about me!"

Laurie forced himself to give the other man's hand a friendly squeeze before letting go. It was merely that, since marrying Amy, he had never so much as thought of Jo's professor, and thus never had the chance to consider him as anything other than a rival. He had no reason to view him that way now, and he wouldn't. At least he could leave his boyhood behind in this small way.

"Right then. Good to meet you. I'm Theodore Laurence. Laurie, actually"

He sat down, feeling unaccountably stiff and out of sorts. Bhaer frowned slightly, and Laurie wondered if he had worn the same expression just moments before.

"Ah, I have heard much of you! The friend from Jo's childhood, ja?"

"Brother-in-law," Laurie said, and wished he hadn't.

"I'm sorry to hear this, for I take it to mean that some pain has so recently fallen upon you."

Laurie could not think of how to respond to this, because it was such an odd thing to hear from a stranger, particularly from one who he had no desire to acquaint himself with further.

They sat in silence until Marmee swooped in to secure Laurie's help in preparing the table, and he was saved from answering. The dear woman watched him for a time, before saying, "I think that he is good for Jo."

Though spoken mildly, the serious look she cast Laurie bore all the weight of a reproach, and he felt it as if it were a blow.

As it turned out, Jo did not sleep through breakfast, but came running down the stairs just as they were sitting down to eat. Laurie was relieved to note that she looked every bit her usual mix of prim and disheveled, and not as though she had put any extra effort into dressing for Bhaer's sake. She bypassed the table, heading at once for the door, and since Marmee was still in the kitchen, it was Laurie who was first to stand up and go after her.

"Where are you running off to so early?" he asked, gripping her arms though he knew he shouldn't.

"The train station to buy a ticket," she whispered. "We may well be bound to stay here, but I won't keep any more people about than are strictly necessary."

She cast him a look that was more than enough to let him know that something had happened, or that she had seen something again, but Bhaer was already approaching them, and she was turning around to face him with a "Good morning!" that was in sharp contrast to her earlier demeanor.

Laurie let go of her, and she didn't bolt for the door.

"There's no need to send me away so very quick,” the professor said mildly, for he had been listening.

"I wish there wasn't," said Jo, "but there's more danger here than you can imagine, and no sense in your staying in the middle of it. If you write me, I will read every letter one hundred times and rejoice in our friendship, but I won't have you staying here. I won't."

Jo had closed her hand around a clunky, awful looking cross that she was now wearing, and which Laurie had never seen before.

"There's a plague here, if you haven't heard," Laurie started, thinking to help Jo, and get her alone as soon as possible, but a glare from her silenced him.

With one gesture, she bade Bhaer to follow her and Laurie to stay behind. A few minutes later, and she was ushering a considerably crestfallen Professor out the door, and closing it behind him without so much as a goodbye.

"What did you say to him?" Laurie asked.

"Terrible things that don't concern you."

Laurie would have been much more ruffled by this answer, had she not drew her hand over her eyes as if considerably upset. Seconds passed in shaky silence while she composed herself.

"What's happened?"

"I saw Beth," she said, so quietly that he almost could not hear her. Even so, she looked around her for any listeners as she said it.

"The one you’ve been seeing?"

"No, different this time. I truly saw _Beth_. My sister."

—————-

Breakfast passed as a blur for Jo, who may well have started crying had she not seen Marmee out of the corner of her eye. She hardly knew what had happened the night before, only that it had shaken her beyond anything.

It had started off normally enough, with the ageless specter at her usual perch in front of the window. Jo had turned from her and closed her eyes, trying to dream away that cold gaze, but she had quickly been hit with anxiety for Professor Bhaer. The girl had not yet come in after her or any member of her household, but there was no knowing for certain that she would not go after her dear guest.

When she'd dared once more to look at the monster she knew to be watching her, she'd found a different creature entirely bent in an attitude of penitence over her windowsill. At first she had only been able to see a head of curling brown hair pressed right up against the glass, and the tattered and soiled lace of an old white nightgown. She'd recognized that hair, however, and recognized that nightgown as the very one her Beth had been buried in; there was dried blood upon it.

At once a shudder had gone through the specter that made Jo think of how a great spasm of pain had nearly caused Beth to fall out of her sick bed, in the hour before she took her last rattling breath. Then the thing had looked up at her, and Jo had known that it was the face of a corpse, but that some remnant of Beth lived in it even so.

Her eyes were vacant and hungry, her skin white, her lips stained, and somehow an expression of abject misery managed to show through these demonic changes. Jo had sat up in bed, and Beth had fled just as Jo had let her blanket slip away from her chest. She seemed to run a few steps, then disappear into nothing, just as Amy had.

Jo wanted to follow. She wanted to with all of her heart, but instead she had merely sat shivering in her bed.

That morning, Jo lectured Professor Bhaer one how rude he'd been for barging into her home without any warning or invitation. She'd reminded him how, in the months previous, she had not written to him, citing the tedious nature of his personality as reason for this, instead of Amy's death. She'd said everything she could to get him to return to New York safely, and leave her to face whatever fate might befall her without himself being dragged into it.

She tried not to think of how dear and comfortable his friendship was, and that it was now forfeit for his safety.

After all was said and done, there was nothing for Jo to do but swallow down the morning meal that Hannah had prepared specifically in honor of their guest, and invent wild stories as to why he'd had to suddenly leave.

Beth came to her twice in the four days that followed, and the girl came to her once, leaving her but one night without either of their company. By some instinct, Jo never took off the cross that Bhaer had given her, and soon found that neither Beth seemed willing to look directly at it.

She spoke about this with Laurie, who remained her only confident in all matters relating to the supernatural.

"Well," he said, "if we've found a way to protect ourselves, we ought to make use of it. Can I look?"

Jo had barely said "Go ahead," when she felt him reach up behind her neck to undo the chain. She stayed absolutely still as he did so. The creatures that watched her were leaving him alone at least, and she'd lately felt that he had an unfair advantage over her.

"I've had time to think of our next step," Jo said, as Laurie's fingers traced the piece of silver in his hands.

"So have I," said Laurie, who most likely would not have spoken just yet, had Jo not rested her head in her hands where she meant to continue. "And that is to get you and your family away, before more happens. You can't expect that Beth will never do any worse than keep you up at night… especially considering…"

He clutched the cross tightly.

"It really is Beth," Jo said. "I would know her in any state. And it is evil, but… she can't be at fault here. Something's happened, and she's trapped between life and death, and perhaps she always will be if nothing is done to tip the balance one way or another."

"And you've come up with something to tip this balance?"

"I can think of many things that should tip it towards death -- fire, for example -- and nothing that would return her to life."

Laurie took Jo’d hands, tugging them to make sure she was looking at him, and not her lap, as she had been of late.

"You aren't trying to find a way to bring Beth back," he said, to which she laughed, more because she _had_ thought of it, than because the idea was as ludicrous to her as it was to him.

"No," she said. "I'm not."

She could feel Laurie moving to gather her to him, and she turned away with a shake of her head, knowing such a position would hardly be conducive to rational conversation.

"You had better tell me exactly what you're thinking," he said with a sigh, his hands not quite falling away from her.

That, Jo thought, would not be easy to do, for she did not know what she was thinking herself, or if she could bear any attempt to explain it.

"Beth and Amy have to be killed, and it must be done correctly, lest they continue to rise up as they do, only --- maimed, or burnt. Professor Bhaer gave me the cross you are holding, and he does know a great many things. I think there's more to this than coincidence."

"And you plan on finding out," Laurie guessed, correctly.

It took Jo the entire day to compose a letter to Professor Bhaer, for guilt played upon her at each word. She had forced him from her in the cruelest way, and yet she believed that this letter would bring him back whether he could truly help them or not, for there was no way to word it without making obvious the peril she was in. In the end, her note said simply:

_I did not mean the things I said to you, and I won't forgive myself for having done so. I wear the gift you give me day and (more importantly) night, and think it may be keeping me from some very real trouble. I understand more of what is happening in Concord now than you might expect, and begin to wonder if you know more than I thought when I sent you away for your protection._

It wasn't a nice note. In one of the drafts that had come before, Jo had poured her heart onto the paper, describing at length her love for Beth , her conflicts with Amy, and each occurrence since the girl had first appeared at her window. Another had been so detached as to sound more like a bad horror novel than anything else, while another had merely been an apology and a chronicle of her relationship with Bhaer, ending in a few words about the problem at hand. Ultimately, Jo chose the only letter that she could read without feeling sick, and failed to make it to the post office until a day later, because she fell into a deep sleep at her writing desk.

As it turned out, she need not have sent it at all.

—————

There were three vampires in Concord, as far as Professor Bhaer could tell. There were three of them, and two were of them were Jo's sisters. These two were very young, and would be comparatively easy to free from the shackles of un-death. Bhaer had never been able to learn what happened to the soul of one who had undergone the transformation into one of the walking dead, but at least he could satisfy himself that the bodies were at rest, and could do no further harm.

The third vampire, the one who must have begun it, had not been a resident of Concord. This one, it seemed, had intelligence. This one had moved the March girls from the graves they had been given, and hid with them in some other tomb. This one could make, or not make others as it chose. This one was old enough to have developed into a thinking creature.

These were the ideas that Bhaer catalogued and re-catalogued, so that he would not think so much of Jo.

He was not a stupid man, and he fancied he understood a great deal about human character, for it was the study of and belief in the human spirit that allowed him to remain whole after so many brushes with darkness. This knowledge told him that Jo had wished to see him, and that his visit would have been a happy one if she had not been good and more anxious for his safety than his company.

The problem was that there was a part of him which, on occasion, drove him to such juvenile acts of devotion as kissing his one picture of her before going to bed at night. This part of him, like most lovers, knew nothing— nothing about the undead, nothing about himself, and most certainly nothing about Jo's meanings and motives. And though he could go about his work, and know that he was doing it for her sake, he could not shake the small notion of romance which made a fool of him.

And so, Professor Bhaer rented a room in Concord's only boarding house, and he worked. He spoke to people who were ill, and had lost family members, careful to confine his questioning to the poor, who were less likely to set society ablaze with gossip about the German doctor who asked strange questions. Perhaps it would be possible to attract and kill the two young vampires at night when they roamed, but he knew better than to fight an older one face to face. He searched for the grave, so that he might take all three of them at once whilst they slept.

It was slow, and it was tedious.

One day Bhaer saw Jo walking with her brother-in-law. He did not approach, but he saw that he kept his hand stubbornly on her elbow, as if unwilling to let her out of her grasp for even a second, and that they conversed in the whispers of those who knew too much. She was still wearing his cross, a sign that gave him much relief. At one point it looked as if she glanced in his direction, but she only walked on, tugging at Laurie's sleeve, and saying something to him.

The next day, there was a knock at his door, and when he opened it Jo was there.

He knew that he must say something to her, and yet he could not.

"I knew that his was the only place you could be staying, so I asked the landlord as to your room. Can you forgive me?" Jo said, with such frankness that Bhaer could not but do so on the spot. He grasped her hand in his, noting with a frown that there were dark circles under her eyes.

"Are you ill?" he asked, feeling his chest tighten, though she shook her head.

She touched her cross.

"This keeps me from it, doesn't it?"

Jo looked Bhaer in the eyes as she said so, and he felt at once that she knew something of what she was facing. If, God forbid, she had actually seen one of the undead, then she was surely in danger of being infected.

"It does," he said, very gently. "Please sit down."

Jo did, choosing the stool besides his desk, rather than the large couch at the other side of the room. She perched at the edge of it, as if in an excess of nerves.

"Do you know about…."

"Yes," Bhaer interrupted, as Jo, despite being a writer, seemed to have trouble coming up with the word for what her family was currently experiencing.

Jo pursed her lips and looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. Then she straightened, and almost smiled at him. "Are you going to tell me, then?" she asked.

It was not a question that he wanted to hear, or an answer he wanted to inflict her with. Jo was, after all, still a very young woman, and he had no desire to impose evil knowledge upon a clean mind. He knew that he must first find out what she was already aware of, and add to that in ways that would give her protection without frightening her.

"Have you experienced ever a great illness in your childhood?" he asked. "Or had a life-threatening danger?"

"No."

"Good," he said, at once relieved. "You know, I think, that this is not only an illness that is killing your landsmen."

"It's Beth and Amy," Jo said, and Bhaer’s heart sank. There was a tremor in her voice as she spoke, yet she sat bravely before him.

"Listen now," he said. "I see already that you do not take off the cross. That is good. They are taken by evil, but you must know that it can not come to you when you do not give it invitation."

"Beth wouldn't have—"

"There are circumstances…" Bhaer stopped, for he saw the way that Jo’s eyes shown, and how very tired she looked. "She didn't," he said, though he did not know enough of Beth to say for sure. "But you must be on your guard that you do not. If you care for yourself, do not open any windows and doors in the night. You will be safe."

"Can they not break in?"

Bhaer shook his head. "Not without invitation, but they may trick you…"

"Please," said Jo. "I need to know everything that you do. I—"

"You don't," Bhaer said, taking hold of her shoulders in a way he would never dream of doing under normal circumstances. Jo looked rather surprised at this, and could not hide her disapproval, whether it was for the touch or for what he said. Bhaer let go.

"I've seen Beth and Amy," Jo said. "And… a young girl, who looks like Beth. Laurie has as well… at least he's seen Amy. She used to go after him, but she hasn't been lately. It does me no good to know that this is happening, without knowing why."

This was a terrifying question, and an even more terrifying admittance. At least it was one he could answer honestly.

"I cannot say why they are here, or why it happens," said Bhaer slowly, "not any more than I can say why there are floods, famines, or plagues. They simply are."

"Then tell me _how_ ," said Jo, whose frustration showed clearly. “Tell me the science behind it.”

"Have you not come to some idea of that on your own?

Jo stood, walking towards the window, quite overcome by annoyance.

"The illness is transmitted through bite. Any idiot can see that, and being able to recognize the mark of death for what it is hasn't helped any of us so far. Amy was bitten, and Beth was probably bitten. Amy became raving mad after. Does every person who receives the bite rise from their grave eventually?"

Bhaer shook his head, but Jo was not looking at him, so could not have seen. She did not pry him with more questions just then, but was very quiet— in order to master herself, Bhaer thought.

"Not every person," Bhaer said.

"Beth and Amy are trapped. I want to help them."

"You must not try."

Jo spun around to face him, her hands clenched into fists, but he went on quickly, instinctively expecting some outburst from her.

"The creatures you see are Beth and Amy no longer. They are evil things, and you must no more try to aide them then you would the devil. Do not think of them if you can help it, but pray, and give them no invitation. You must rely on your own goodness to protect you, else risk becoming what they are."

"Nobody is doing anything to stop them. If I know about them, and others don't, then I should do something," said Jo. She argued still, but Bhaer knew that his words were not lost on her, if only because she was paler than before, and her voice was softer.

"I am doing something," Bhaer promised. "You must not. These creatures have too great a hold on you, being of your family. Keep in mind that this is an illness that can destroy your soul as well as your body, and keep far away."

He glanced at the sun, which though bright still, would set in a matter of hours, and at Jo, who was the very picture of dissatisfaction.

"Let me take you home," he said, to which she nodded.

The walk was long and silent, and Bhaer did not press Jo to speak, knowing that she must process all of what she had just learned.

Jo’s mother smiled at him when he entered the home with her, and he was relieved to see that it was the smile of one who did not know.

——————

Weeks passed before Amy began to remember who she was, or at least before she began to consciously remember. Even then, she could not say how or why the awareness had come about, though she could remember the exact moment when it had happened. She had been wandering with no thought in her head aside from the desire to feed, when suddenly she had turned to the monster-child who guided her, and said quite clearly, "My name is Amy March."

She had had to stop then, so lost was she in the wonder if this strange utterance. The girl who laughed beside her did not have to tell her then that her own name was Anka… somehow she knew her companion better than she did herself.

"Amy March is dead," Anka had said, moving away so quickly that Amy had to strain to keep up with her. For a moment she lost sight of Anka completely, and in this way she quickly made another discovery— she was afraid. She was afraid of the dark, the grave she slept in, the hunger that filled her constantly, and most of all of being left alone in it. And so she'd hastened her step, until she had found Anka standing in front of her, as if she had emerged from the very shadows that filled Amy with such dread.

"Amy is dead," Anka had repeated, "but you may use her name, if you wish. I shall have to call you something now that you have started speaking."

There was no more discussion that night, for the hunger obliterated all reason, and the creature that killed a child and then ripped it open so as not to miss a drop of its precious blood could hardly think of herself as Amy March.

Anka called her by that name from that point on, in a faintly mocking way that made Amy wish she had never remembered.

One evening, Amy went to the home she had shared with her husband, and found that he wasn't there. For the first time she knew that she had been going there every night.

The next evening, she found flowers on her grave, and knew from whom they had come. She knew as well that she hungered for those that had left the flowers in a way the was different, and infinitely stronger than any other impulse she now felt.

"I'll kill them if I have a chance," Amy had said, to the sound of Anka's laughter. Slowly she slipped the wedding band off her hand, and left it on the grave. She didn't truly wish to kill them, and this troubled her.

"You had the chance, and you didn't. Do you not remember?"

Amy shook her head.

"You will begin to remember more."

"Why don't I remember more now?" Amy asked.

"You are in your infancy in this new life. Your thoughts are that of any newborn creature."

The conversation would have ended there, forgotten forever in pursuit of blood, had Anka not added, "Beth is a much greater danger to your mortal family than you are. She knows not who she is, yet longs still for those that were once dear to her. She will bring the end to whomever lets her close, and never know what she is doing. I may let her. Perhaps then she will awaken, and I won't be so alone."

Time passed. Amy came to know that more of her spirit had survived the transformation than she had previously guessed, and that it was this remnant of her living self that allowed her to be horrified as Anka calmly informed her that another sister had been marked for death.

————-

Jo went to bed that night, feeling as if her conversation with Professor Bhaer had stolen all warmth from her. She tried to pray as instructed, but found that she could not concentrate, could not keep her mind fixed on her heavenly father, no matter how she tried. Bhaer had told her to rely on her own goodness for protection, yet she was not half as good as Beth had been. Jo closed her eyes to a wish that she could go back in time, to when the three beds besides hers had been occupied by Beth, Amy, and Meg.

In her dreams, the three of them were there once more, but the beds had been replaced with coffins, for they were all dead.

Morning came, and Jo pulled her pillow over her head to protect herself against the sun, the rays of which seemed to shoot through her eyes and weave their way, needle-like, through her pounding head. If only her body had not felt so very heavy, she could have risen and closed the curtains.

Why were the curtains open? The curtains were open, and the window as well.

Feeling as though she could not breath, Jo reached out to touch her neck, as terror told her what must have happened, where memory could not. When she pulled her hand away, her fingers were tinged with red, for the wound, though small, was still open.

Some minutes later, after she'd made herself rise, she found her cross under her pillow with the chain torn.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - This chapter includes a lot of death and gore.

Laurie could not bring himself to take another walk over to the March home, but it worried him that it would be dark soon, and that he had not so much as seen or spoken to Jo that day. She was, her mother said, with Professor Bhaer, and Laurie knew that she had gone to see him the day before as well. He did not understand why Jo did not come and find him with any information that she had gained, when such information was so important to them both.

And thus, he watched for her at his window, knowing that she would have to come home at some point, and not entirely trusting her to come find him when she did.

It had been a long time since he had watched the March window, though he had sometimes spent hours at it during his boyhood. He could still remember what a sweet scene it had been - Mother March sitting by the fire, often with all four of her girls, sometimes only with Jo and Meg if it was quite late at night. Jo had seemed so lively then, and so unguarded when among her family, though she never was around him. She hadn't seemed especially lively for a long time, and if she _did_ let her formidable guard down occasionally, it was only because it was too difficult to maintain.

Less than an hour to sunset, and he finally saw Jo racing homewards, as if she were late for something. She was wearing an old dress that he could always remember her owning, and her long hair hung down wildly. He opened his window, and called out her name at once.

"Jo! I've been looking for you!" he said. She jumped, as if startled.

"Come down quickly, before it's dark," she called back, all impatience. "I'll give you one minute, then I'm going inside."

There was something in the tone of her voice which didn't sound right to him, and it was more than enough to send him rushing downstairs, without bothering to put on his coat.

Jo had looked painfully lovely to him when he first viewed her from his window, almost like a angel from his past. Up close, she looked pale, tired, and all together terrible.

"What's wrong," he asked, reaching for her hand and feeling her pull away. She was not going to let him touch her that night, and it wasn't fair. In a world that had turned into a living hell she was his only support, and he was the only one who could understand the things that she saw, yet she was warm towards him one moment, and icy the next, all according to her whim.

"Nothing," she said, too quickly.

"Did you talk with Professor Bhaer?" he asked. "Does he know something?"

"Yes," she said. "He knows all sorts of things. He told me some yesterday, but he doesn't want to get into the half of it, and the things he did tell are no help. I wish he would say more, so I could fix things, but he _won't_ , so we haven't any hope at all."

These words came out in a rush that was rather frightening to Laurie. Jo had taken a step back away from him, and her hands were clenched tightly, as though he and she were fighting.

"And here you know things, and you aren't telling me either," said Laurie, who could not help feeling angry when she looked so irrationally furious at him.

"I was getting to that," Jo snapped back at him.

"I'd have thought you would've gotten to that yesterday, since whatever it is you know, you've known it since then."

"It doesn't help!" 

Perhaps Jo saw how ready Laurie was to begin shouting at her in earnest, for she began speaking quickly.

"All he would tell me - literally, all that he would tell me - is that these creatures can not enter our homes if we don't allow them. He also told me that I must - I must trust in God, and make myself as good as possible. There - you see, I told you it was useless. Neither of us have ever been terribly good, anyway."

Jo was shivering. There was something awful about that, though Laurie could not think what just then. It was nearly November, the nights were getting colder, and she wore no cloak. Of course she was cold.

"What kind of invitation are we talking about?” asked Laurie, trying his best to be calm.

"How am I to know?"

"Well, if you don't know, you should have asked the old man, since you say he does."

"Go ask him yourself, when you get a chance," said Jo, turning from him with an air of finality.

Laurie put his hand on her arm, to stop her from running inside. The next moment he found himself pushed backwards away from her with force that he could not have anticipated, and which almost sent him stumbling to the ground.

Jo looked at him after, not glaring any longer, but wide-eyed and open-mouthed. However, before he could say anything, she was running back towards her house, and he spitefully decided that he would let her go.

Later that night, Laurie paced about his room, his anger fading slowly but surely into confusion, and finally concern. His last thought as he fell asleep that night was not of her avoidance, or the way she had pushed and shouted at him, but of her shivering. He tried to think whether or not her skin had been cold when he touched her. Amy had shivered near constantly before she died, and her hands had been cold as ice.

…...

Jo could not think clearly, and this bothered her more than the dreadful coldness which had descended upon her as the day progressed. She had walked through the woods to Beth and Amy's graves, and lost several hours looking for Meg's grave, before she had remembered that Meg was not dead yet. At that point, she had sternly decided that she must keep close watch of her own mind, lest it produce fallacy after fallacy. Even that had not stopped her from shouting at Laurie that evening, and pushing him away from her when she should have told him what was happening.

Amy had done nothing but shout at people and imagine things in her last days.

Sallie Gardener had torn her husband's throat open with her teeth.

Neither of them had ever had Jo's formidable temper, and it was terrifying for Jo to think of what she might do.

Jo sat by her window, the Professor's cross in hand, resolving that whatever happened, she would not sustain a second attack that night.

When nothing did happen for hours upon hours, Jo decided that the waiting was beyond all endurance.

She took out her bag with the knife, the pistol, and the shovel, from where she had stowed it under Beth's bed. She had a box of matches on her bedside table, used for lighting the lamp that stood there. She picked those up too. She put on her shoes, and after some rummaging, found a winter shawl to put on over her nightgown.

She wondered if she should write a note to her parents, in case she didn't come back.

She didn't think she would have to courage to go out if she did.

She left the house as quietly as she could, and made sure to lock the door behind her. It would do no good to leave her family open to attack, invited or not.

In the first hour or so that Jo walked outside, nothing happened. She walked all the way back to Beth's grave, and it was undisturbed as usual. She lit a match, and waited until the cold night seemed to seep into her bones, and her teeth were chattering, and still nothing happened. It seemed to her that something ought to happen. She was, after all, sitting alone in a graveyard, at night, in the middle of a town infested with the walking dead.

She reached to touch her cross, and found that it wasn't there - she'd left it by the window. Jo's breath caught at that realization, and she stood up to return home.

Now she was not telling herself that something ought to happen, but trying to reassure herself that nothing would. The night, after all, was almost over. Come morning she would tell Professor Bhaer everything, and if he could not help her, then she would confess everything to Marmee and beg to be burnt after she died, so that she could not rise along with Beth and Amy.

It was in the midst of all these thoughts of burning that Jo's candle went out.

Though she could not remember how it had happened the first time, this time there was no denying the arms that wound tightly around her, or the feeling of teeth sinking into her neck.

…...

Laurie went to find Jo in the morning, rising very early to do so, lest she run off without speaking to him again. He was not entirely sure that he wanted to apologize, but he needed to at least speak to her, and see what had caused her outburst last evening. If she was going to see Professor Bhaer again, he would come with her, and shake whatever he knew out of him if necessary.

It was a windy, rainy morning, and the door to the March home was wide open when Laurie arrived. The rain water had made a great puddle at the entrance of the house, and he could not imagine why Hannah would allow it. He tried calling out Mrs. March's name and then Jo's before entering, but as no answer came, he let himself in.

He could not say why, but as he entered the living room, his eyes immediately rested on Beth's old piano. He knew from many trips to the March home that it was kept closed when not in use, but it was open now. There was something red upon the keys, and Laurie took half a step closer to inspect it, before realizing that what he was seeing were bloody finger prints.

He found the bodies a moment later.

Mrs. March lay by Jo's bed, her face grey, and great puncture wounds on her wrist and neck. Her eyes were open, and if Laurie had been capable of rational thought just then, he would have prayed that they could not see what lay before them.

Father March's body was spread out against the wall. His chest had been torn apart, but that was hardly the worst of it. His face, which had once gazed so lovingly upon his wife and daughters, was gone, leaving only the exposed bone beneath it for Laurie to see. He did not stay to look for it, but turned from the room, slamming the door behind him. He leaned against the door for a time, breathing deeply, and trying his best not to be sick (a battle which he lost, a moment later, as the scent of blood was too heavy in the air.).

He did not think of Jo right away. He did not, in fact, think about much of anything. When he finally did remember, the thought was just enough to allow him to move, weak and unsteady as he felt. He had to find her.

He looked first through the house, and though he almost tripped over Hannah in the kitchen, who was just as dead as the others, he did not see any sign of Jo.

He began to wonder if she had been in the room with her parents, and he had somehow failed to see this in his terror. It was then that he realized that his face was wet, with what must have been tears. He would not go back to that room. He did not think it was even possible to.

He would not go back to that room, and he would not believe that Jo was in there. She had to be somewhere else, and he would find her.


	18. Chapter 18

Somewhere, on the verge of consciousness, Jo was aware of a few elemental things. She knew that she was cold, and that she was wet. She could taste dirt, and somehow she recognized it for what it was, even when no other coherent thoughts came to her. Once she opened her eyes and saw what felt like hundreds of trees, but she closed them quickly, unable to hold on to reality just yet.

She slept and she woke, she woke and she dreamt. In Jo's dreams, she was still trapped by arms which wouldn't let her move, and she could feel the life draining out of her body. The remembered sound of Beth swallowing against her neck blended with the sound of falling rain and would not let Jo be.

Then, suddenly, something was hovering over Jo, and she opened her eyes with a start, thinking she had lay there for too long, and that night had come again. It was almost as dark as night, but the sky was grey rather then black, and she could not imagine anything dearer than the face which she squinted to see before her.

"Teddy," she said. She wrapped her arms around him, unsure of whether she had somehow found the energy to leap upwards, or if he had leaned over to gather her into his embrace. Her arms where slippery with mud and rainwater, and she held on as tightly as she could, fearing she would lose her hold on him, and he would be gone. She could not stop shivering. She was so cold.

Laurie did not say anything for a long time, but held her to him. Even when Jo's arms began to loosen from exhaustion, he did not let go. He pushed her hair away from her neck, and Jo could feel the shudder that went through him at what he saw. His breathing became ragged, and his heartbeat quickened.

"I'll die if you do," he said, and Jo knew - would've known in any state of pain, confusion, or even death - that he meant it.

"I don't know what happened," she said into his chest. What she really meant by that was 'help', and it seemed he understood.

"It's all right. I… I'll… I'm here, and I'm with you, and I will make it all right."

He squeezed her tighter, with a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob, and it was some minutes before he'd recovered enough to kiss the top of her head, and then pull her up with him into a standing positions.

"Come on, let's go. Let's go… we can go somewhere warm. We can't stay out here. Can you walk, if I support you?"

Jo nodded. If she had tried to search for strength and determination at that point, she would not have found it, and would not have gone anywhere unless Laurie carried her. However, as she did not think just then, or consider the difficulty of putting one foot in front of the other, she was able to do it.

She wondered why he said "someplace warm" and not "home".

"This isn't right," Jo said, once they'd reached that place.

"Quiet now, and don't argue. I found your bag, and know what you were trying to do, and… oh Jo, what were you thinking?"

Laurie sounded angry just then, but a moment later he had sat her down, and was cupping her face in his hands, for she was crying. She knew that she shouldn't, when he'd been so good so far, and looked so frightened, but she couldn't help it, and for once she didn't try to.

"Quiet," he said again, in a completely different tone. Jo didn't know if he was soothing or pleading with her. She tried to swallow back her tears for his sake, but this she could not quite manage. They were in the house that he shared with Amy, Jo realized dimly. She was seated in the hall chair next to the coat rack, near the front exit.

Laurie knelt by her until she had more or less fallen silent, and then he disappeared for what felt like an inordinately long time, telling Jo to stay still and not to worry.

The next thing Jo was aware of was Laurie untying her soaked shawl, and dropping it on the floor beside them. He'd brought several towels, and a basin of steaming water with him. Jo shut her eyes as his hands came up under her nightgown, and he lifted it off over her head. What she felt wasn't precisely humiliation, for she was far too worn for that, but there were some things she could look at him, and know he was doing. He removed her drawers next, and then her shoes and socks, which were filled with water, and had done little to keep her feet warm.

Jo spared a glance at her boy then. He was terribly pale, and his lips were set in a thin line. Seeing that she was looking, he quickly cast his eyes down, and busied himself with dipping one of his cloths in the water he'd brought. Jo closed her eyes again, and he brought the cloth to the side of her face that she had been lying on, which must have been covered in dirt.

The sensation of heat was incredibly good for Jo, who was shivering still. However, she did not get to enjoy it very long, for she was soon fast asleep.

———————————-

Laurie paced wildly about the living room. It had been difficult to think of where to put Jo. She needed to sleep, but he could not bring himself to lay her in the bed that he and Amy had shared when she was alive and well, or in the guest room where Amy had died. Finally, he had chosen to wrap her in blankets, and settle her on the living room couch.

He hadn't dressed her. He had been afraid that he would wake her trying.

He hadn't remembered to make her eat and drink. He thought perhaps that he should have.

He hadn't told her about her mother and father. He would have to do that when she woke.

Laurie tried to fixate on small, practical things that could help them, for the rest was too terrible. Nonetheless, his mind kept returning to Jo's house, and the bloodstains on the piano. Somehow, this small detail haunted him more than Father March with his missing face, and his vacant blue eyes staring out of a blood-streaked skull. Jo had spoken of Beth when she was still well. Could some visage of Beth have been the cause of all of this? Beth, who had been so sweet and dear, and an inspiration to all of them in her short life?

And what of Jo? If she died, would she become like Beth eventually? Would she become like Amy? Would she come for him? Laurie didn't imagine that he would care much what happened to himself after Jo was dead, and she did seem as if she would die. Her skin was icy and pale, and her breathing was shallow. Though she had looked at him, and spoken to him before, it had been unclear just how much she saw, how much she knew what she was saying.

And what had she been doing outside, exactly? She could not have been sleep walking as Amy had, and she could not have been fleeing from whatever monster killed her parents. She'd had time to put on her shoes, time to gather her things - clearly she had chosen to leave the house.

It had to have been Beth, Laurie thought. Nobody but Beth could make Jo do something so stupid.

In his fear, Laurie cursed Jo, and he cursed Beth. He cursed himself, for not realizing what was wrong with Jo, when they'd argued last night. He cursed himself for bringing her to this house where Amy had died, and from which he had dismissed nearly all of the servants, as he lived here no longer. They needed help, and Laurie was not willing to run out in search of it just then, for that would mean leaving Jo alone.

The only person who worked for him still was the stable boy, who came every day at noon to tend to the horses, for they had been expensive, and Laurie's Grandfather still held out hope that he would return to this doomed home of his and have need of them.

The boy arrived at noon, by which point Laurie had resolved to send for Professor Bhaer, and see what he could do. He would _make_ the Professor do something, he decided, whether he wanted to or not.

The boy seemed fairly taken aback by Laurie's appearance, for though he had taken pains to make sure that Jo was clean and dry, he had not remembered to do the same for himself. Laurie guessed that seeing his master muddy and distraught (he could not pretend that he wasn't) would have been enough to make the kind-hearted lad set off quickly with his message, but for good measure he promised him promised him five dollars, if only he would fly.

Then he returned to Jo's side, to watch, and to wait.


	19. Chapter 19

On the desk of Professor Bhaer's rented room lay an open case made of faded mahogany wood and lined with frayed silk, the contents of which had been spread out in a jumbled heap around it. Three wooden stakes, a pistol with silver bullets, a mirror, a flask of holy water, an assortment of religious symbols, bulbs of garlic, talismans of every shape and description, an odd contraption of two syringes laced together by a hollow length of tough leather, a little black pill that could induce vomiting, and which was said to be reusable— all things which various cultures and sciences prescribed for the hunting of vampires and the treatment of their bite. Bhaer felt dizzy just looking at it all, for though he was armed to the teeth and prepared to fight against whatever monsters were destroying the town of Concord, he still had been unable to find those monsters' lair. He was beginning to feel that he would soon have to do something drastic, if he was to have any hope of ending this.

This idea reverberated in his already taxed mind at the sound of a loud, nearly frantic knock at the door, which sent Bhaer flying to his feet without even thinking to put away his instruments.

His first thought was that Jo had come, and she had met some trouble. As such, he found himself staring for a moment at the freckled boy who stood before him.

"Mr. Laurie is looking for ye, sir," said the boy, who had a New England accent almost as difficult to decipher as that of the March's housekeeper. Bhaer went at once to gather his utensils into his box, while the boy went on breathlessly about something to do with rain and trouble.

The boy's distress was evident, and Bhaer wished he could understand more than half of what he was saying. When the child asked him why he had a gun, however, Bhaer understood the words very clearly. It was not the sort of question that he ever wanted to be asked by a child, even if this one was so big as to be barely a child at all any more.

"It's for…protection," Bhaer replied, trying not to sound overly grave, yet not fully aware that his face had fixed itself in a deep frown at the mention of Jo's brother in law, which betrayed all his worry about what was to come.

The boy gave him a quizzical look, as if to say that it was impossible to shoot a plague, but only gestured for Bhaer to follow him to see his master.

Bhaer wondered, not for the first time, at the strange innocence of the young, for he could not think of a single adult who would willingly lead an armed stranger.

The house that the boy led him to was grandiose and elegant in the modern way, with clean white lines and manicured gardens. It was entirely different from the cozy March home, and even the great mansion standing beside it, the appearance of which made Bhaer imagine velvet curtains and musty libraries.

"Mr. Laurie lives here," the boy explained, pushing the door, which had been left open in spite of the weather. The first thing that Bhaer noticed was that a woman's shawl and nightgown lay in a soaking heap on the floor, along with shoes and some other articles of clothing that Bhaer thought it was best he didn't look at.

"Something happened," the boy said, stating the obvious in way of explanation. Laurie arrived then, looking frazzled and damp. A few words passed between him and the young man, who he dismissed. Bhaer found his eyes once again fixed on the pile of clothing.

"The shoes belong to Miss March," he said, as Laurie's hands fell on his arm.

"Brilliant," came the younger man's reply. "Care to guess who the rest of the things belong to?"

At any other time Laurie's tone of voice would have rattled Bhaer, but already fear was making his heart beat faster and his hands turn cold.

"She was bitten," Said Bhaer, for there was no need to wonder in these circumstances.

"Yes, she's been bitten." Laurie's words came with a pained hitch, and Bhaer was ready to put a hand on his shoulder and request to see Jo as gently as possible, when he turned on him. "Given how you know already that this is the only possible explanation for my bringing you here, I'm surprised you couldn't have predicted it. Jo says you're something of an expert on the bites."

"Let me see her," answered Bhaer, much more coldly than he'd intended to.

Jo was in his living room, asleep on his couch, her skin paper white. How different she looked from the healthy girl who had come to question him only two days ago, and who he had clearly answered not nearly well enough.

"How many times was she bitten?" Bhaer asked, kneeling down to check her pulse, and to check for any marks on her skin.

"How the devil am I to know?"

Laurie's voice came uncomfortably close to Bhaer’s ear, for he had followed his motions, and was now kneeling by Jo as well. He sounded more despairing than angry. Bhaer wished that he would stand up and back away.

"You spend much time with her," Bhaer replied.

"You've spent more time with her over the last few days than I have. She told me she asked you about the bites and her sisters, and you didn't tell her anything. In turn, she wouldn't tell me anything, not even the little bit she knew, not even that… something was happening to her."

"When I last saw her, nothing had happened to her," said Bhaer, though he still could not but feel that much of the blame sat clearly on his shoulders. "Tell me all you know, at once."

"You tell me first," said Laurie. He sprung to his feet, hands clenched as if he'd rather like to hit something or someone. He would not be easy to deal with. In fact, none of this would be easy to deal with, and perhaps a lack of cooperation on Laurie's part would prove the least of Bhaer’s problems.

"I have much to tell, and some has little relation to what we see today. I need to know something of what is happening."

"I found her asleep outside this morning. She was… disoriented. She hasn't told me a thing. I found her bag as well. There was a knife in it. Her parents…"

Here Laurie trailed off, and his hand went to his face, in a way that Bhaer knew better than to interrupt right away.

"Do they know she is here with you?"

"I daresay they don't."

"Where are they?" Asked Bhaer, his voice trembling just a bit in anticipation of an answer that he knew he would not like.

"Dead," Laurie answered, as if he could minimize the pain of this by saying as little as possible.

Bhaer could not say anything just then, but brushed the hair away from Jo's neck, and tried to ground himself in the reality and the clinical details of the situation. The mark was an angry, deep red, and showed signs of bruising around the edges. This in and off itself was unusual. He did not dare to remove her blankets to look over the rest of her, but his guess was that she had struggled against the creature, and survived it somehow. Most bite victims he had known had been unable to fight against their attackers, and he suspected those who had been aware enough to try it were the ones who did not survive even the first attack.

"In what condition are the bodies?" asked Bhaer, feeling as though he were a million miles outside of himself. If the bodies were whole, then he would have to make sure that they did not rise, and he would have to do so before sunset.

Laurie made a sound somewhere between a cough and a cry, and Bhaer decided wisely to wait and say nothing.

"Her mother isn't so bad," Laurie said, then shook his head. "Or, rather, she's dead, and it doesn't get much worse than that, but her father…"

Bhaer stood, cutting Laurie off with a quick nod, and a touch of the hand which the man did not refuse this time.

"It can get worse," Bhaer said carefully. "I must tend to the mother quickly so that it doesn't."

He turned from Laurie, picking up his hunting kit from where he had dropped it haphazardly upon entering. He opened it, and kneeling again by Jo, pressed the cross to her forehead. To his relief, she made no movement, or sign of pain.

"What are you doing?" Laurie asked. He stood close, as though preparing to push Bhaer away if he tried anything he did not like.

"The cross does not harm her," Bhaer explained. "That means that the creature… the vampire… has drank of her blood, but she didn't taste its. She will not rise when she dies.."

"When…?" Laurie's voice cracked here, and Bhaer winced. He had meant to say "if", really and truly, but there was no taking it back now.

"All of us die one day, isn't it so? I pray her death will not be soon. I must look to the mother now. Can you watch Miss March for the time being? Give her food if she wakes and…"

"And you will return after, to tell us the next step?"

Bhaer nodded.

He only hoped that there was a next step, and he could find it.


	20. Chapter 20

Laurie spent the first hour after Bhaer had left watching Jo sleep, impatient for some sort of change to take place in her, and afraid that he wouldn't like it if it did. He felt that he needed to be doing something for her there and then, but he could not quite imagine what. They were both in danger, he was sure, and above all else he wanted Jo to live. Such things required quick action, so why was he merely sitting there?

Laurie found himself thinking not of their current situation, but of that day long ago, when he and Jo had both been children, and Amy had fallen into the frozen river. He had done all the right things that day. He had never in his life seen a drowning person be rescued, nor had he ever read so much as a single book on the dangers of hypothermia. He hadn't even seen the rail that they'd used to drag Amy out of the water before the moment they had needed it, and covering Amy with his own clothing after had seemed as natural a decision as breathing. He hadn't thought or planned — he had simply known, and become alive and powerful in this sudden knowing. He wondered how he had managed it, and why he was so blank and useless now.

Occupied though he was with thoughts of cold and ice, it took Laurie a long while to realize that he was quite chilly himself. His damp clothing hung oppressively against his frame, and he was even shivering a bit. He rose to change into more suitable dress.

Jo was staring at the wall when he returned. Her eyes followed him as he came to sit in front of her on the couch, on an edge of cushion not taken up by her body.

"Hello," he said. He thought he should be relieved to see her awake, but it merely served to make his anxiety hit him full force.

"Hello," she replied.

He ran a careful, trembling hand through her hair, more to calm himself than to calm Jo, who seemed in a daze.

"How are you feeling?"

"Damned if I know," Jo muttered in a tone which would have made him laugh at any other time. She sounded as though she meant to defy the world, as she had often tried to in the past, back before the world had become so formidable.

"You should eat something," Laurie said, annoyed that it had taken him so long to remember the only instruction that Professor Bhaer had given him.

"I'd rather dress."

"We can do both.” With that Laurie leapt up, grateful to at least have a task for the time being.

He went to find clothes first. The only clothing in the house was his own, and a few articles of Amy's which he had not been able to make himself throw out. The first thing he reached for was Amy's nightgown, but he dropped it to the floor almost as quickly, the thought of putting Jo in Amy's old clothing too ghastly for him. He instead selected a loose shirt of his own, and a pair of trousers.

Upon his return, Jo made it known that she wanted privacy, and he went to the kitchen to look for something to eat. This proved harder than expected. The servants had been kind enough to clear out anything that would spoil once he left the premises, and though he was able to locate copious amounts of flour, sugar, and salt, and even a canister of particularly good tea, there was nothing in his cupboards for a person to actually eat. He settled on making the tea, and sweetening it to the point where he could see the sugar in it even after he had stirred it, and heaped in a spoonful of flour on a last minute inspiration, thinking it might add some bulk to the drink.

He then brought the cup to Jo, who was dressed, sitting up in the corner of the couch, and for all this looked more unwell and discomforted even than she had been when he had first brought her home. He handed her the tea, wanting only to make things better, and knowing that he must soon make it so much worse with the news he would give her.

"Is this your culinary invention?" Jo asked, after some time had passed, and he began to think she would not speak at all.

"I'm afraid so," he said, false gravity masking the real gravity of what as soon to come, "And I'll think you not to plague me for it, lest you want me to bring up your trials in the kitchen."

"Wouldn't mind if you did. It's so hard to think properly of anything right now."

Laurie moved from where he had been standing, somewhat awkwardly watching her, and took a seat on the couch at her side. For once, he wondered if this was what Jo would want. He knew if he were in her shoes, then he would want closeness and physical assurance, but Jo had so often gone to great lengths to avoid his touch, and had made it clear many a time that she wanted nothing of the sentiment he felt compelled to show her. She made no move to push him away now, but perhaps she was merely too tired to bother.

He stayed close even so, selfishly, for he wasn't sure how he could go on if he didn't.

"Jo," he asked, "What exactly were you doing last night?"

"I…" she trailed off as though searching for something. "I couldn't stay in bed and know that I was dying, so I went out to do something about it."

"You were already marked when you went out last night," Laurie said. The idea made him feel cold, and he thought some of this showed in this voice. He did not want to be angry with Jo, but it was difficult not to be when he knew how much her silence had cost them.

"I couldn't tell Marmee. She's been through so much with Amy and Beth. I had to at least try and cure myself before I put another burden on her. I suppose I must tell her now."

Laurie shuddered at that, and took Jo's hand in his.

"What happened outside?" he asked. "Was it Beth?"

Jo nodded. She wore a look of intense concentration, as she searched for the details of what had happened to her.

"Amy was there at the end!" she said, as if the utterance surprised her as much as it did him. "She told Beth to stop."

"What? How do you know it was Amy? Did you see her? What did she look like?"

Laurie asked all these things in a state of great excitement, but Jo only shook her head, bewildered.

"Did she say anything?"

"She told Beth to stop."

"Did she say anything else? Anything about what was happening, or about your parents? Jo, did she say anything about me?"

Jo winced almost as if he had struck her, and Laurie knew that he had gone too far.

"Beth had me, and I couldn't move," she said. "I tried and tried. Beth was never that strong in life. Her mouth was on my neck, and I couldn't see anything, only hear, and feel… feel everything draining out of me."

"Did it hurt?" asked Laurie, before he could stop himself.

Jo's hands went to her face at once, her body tense, as if memories were something she could fight off physically. The unfinished tea began to soak into the couch, and the fabric of her borrowed trousers, for she had moved suddenly with no regard for it.

Laurie placed his hand lightly on her shoulders.

"Jo," he began.

"It's all right," she said, even as he began to pull her to him. "I'm all right. It's fine. I don't know what it felt like, but it didn't hurt."

Laurie nodded, his head now close to her own. He wanted to ask her more, but he wouldn't do it just then. He imagined that there was only so much strength to be had between the two of them, and he must now take on the portion that was usually Jo's.

"I should go home," Jo said at last.

Laurie tightened his arms around her for a moment, then let go.

"Jo, dearest, I need you to look at me," he said. There was that hitch in his voice again, that feeling that he might break in two, that everything had already ended in disaster for them, and they were merely clinging to the wreck of a ship that had long since sunk.

She did as she was Tolstoy, and though there was something apprehensive about the set of her mouth, it also struck Laurie just then that Jo trusted him. It was funny to think it, because for the longest time he had been sure that she didn't, but there it was. This revelation, coupled with the memory of the carnage he had been faced with that morning, and the knowledge of what he now must tell her, caused him to blurt out something very different all together.

"I love you," he said.

Jo's mouth fell open, and her brow creased, till Laurie couldn't tell if she was disgusted or merely confused.

"We're not going through this again," she said, casting a glance towards the door.

"Jo, listen, I…"

"No, you listen. You've chosen entirely the wrong time for this. You know that it won't do either of us any good. I don't know why you would start loving me now. I don't feel a thing like myself."

"It's not something that's just started now, Jo…" he said, and no matter Jo's current state, his old exasperation was so close to the surface that it was all he could do not to shake her.

"Teddy, don't…" The words held a warning, and reminded Laurie of the first time he had confessed his love for Jo, back when they had both been innocent. He'd be damned if he let it play out now as it had in the past.

"Please," he said, taking her face in his hands. "Don't start that with me. I'm not trying to propose to you again. I don't know if I see you as a friend, a sister, or something else entirely, and quite frankly I'm tired of trying to separate and decide which is which. I do know that I care for you beyond all measure, and that I'd feel the same no matter what state you were in. Now, tell me honestly, Jo, do you care for me as well?"

"I do, but…"

He planted a quick, nearly frantic kiss on her cold forehead.

"Then call it love," he said. "You might have need of it soon. I know I do. It's the only thing I can imagine that can make this situation bearable."

His hands fell away from her, for her face was downcast. She did not say anything, but took both of his hands in her own. That, he thought, was answer enough.

Laurie wanted to rejoice at this, and a part of him did, but what still needed to be said weighed him down like a stone.

"You aren't going to like what I have to tell you," he warned.

"I'd like to see you come out with something more baffling than you all ready have."

Laurie sighed, and kept his grip on her hands firm.

"Your mother and father were killed last night. I found them before I found you. Jo, I…"

Just then the front door opened.

"I've finished," Professor Bhaer said, as he entered the house.


	21. Chapter 21

"Your mother and father were killed last night. I found them before I found you. Jo I…"

Everything seemed to stop there. Jo's breath caught in her throat, and though Laurie gripped her hand with all his strength, his head was bowed, and she did not think he could go on any more than she could. Jo had felt cold all day, cold since the morning she had woken up with the marks upon her neck, but that was nothing compared to this.

"I've finished."

Jo registered Professor Bhaer's voice, and it felt like an invasion. The tears which had been prickling behind her eyes refused to fall, and Jo did not think she could move for all the world. Perhaps this was why she did not notice who stood behind Professor Bhaer, until Laurie, in a voice ragged with sorrow, spoke her name.

"Meg…"

Jo looked up at her sister then. Her were eyes red from what must have been a long bout of crying, her face pale, her hands shaking at her sides.

"What's finished?" Jo asked, but Bhaer only looked down at his own hands.

In the minutes that passed, Jo found herself seated on the couch, listening as Bhaer and Laurie spoke, and Meg stood near them, looking as if she were far too distressed to follow the conversation. Jo assumed she must look the same way, for the men were talking about her rather than with her.

Her mother and father had been bitten, her father torn beyond recognition, and her mother whole but no less dead for all that she still had her face. Staking had been necessary to keep them from rising again. Bhaer had found Meg kneeling in the room beside the bodies. The tale unfolded distantly at first, as though it were a story happening to someone else, but then Jo looked again at Meg, and saw that there was blood on her dress.

"We have to get John and the children," Jo said, standing. "They have to leave! They have to leave this instant, on the first train out of Concord."

The Professor nodded, but came besides her and took hold of her arm, as if to silence her.

Laurie glanced at his watch. "It's nearly five o'clock," he said, looking as worried as Jo felt, "and there are no night trains."

Jo swallowed hard, and tried to remember the part of her that had allowed to play at being a protective brother to her sisters when they were younger, though at the moment she felt more inclined to panic than anything else.

"Why didn't somebody think of this?" she asked, her voice rising. "Everyone is dead. I'm dying. Meg and her children are the only ones who might survive, and nobody could do anything about them before nightfall?"

Jo jerked her arm out Bhaer's grasp, and went over to stand by Meg.

"Jo, you're not…" Meg started, and though Jo already regretted every word she had said, there was no escaping the truth the stretched out like a wasteland before them.

"We can find the husband, and bring him here before dark," said Bhaer. He was so grave suddenly, and so unlike the kind, smiling figure Jo remembered from New York. "And I will prepare this house for the night, so that nothing may come in from outside. In the morning, we will send everybody away that can leave."

It was decided that Laurie would go to gather the family, and he left with a backwards glance at Jo, as if wondering what more he could do for her. The Professor began to dig through the contents of a wooden case that he carried, and though Jo wanted to see just what he was looking for, she knew that she must attend to Meg instead… that she must find the strength to do so, because everyone else was dead, and there was nothing more important in the world just then.

Somehow attending to Meg consisted of pulling her over to the couch, then sitting down herself, with her head resting on the back cushions, and her face turned towards the ceiling.

"Jo…" Meg said, after some time had passed.

Though Jo had to force herself to do it, she straightened, and took hold of her sister's hand.

"I.." Meg's eyes were full of tears. "I went this morning, to gather some old dresses of Amy's that Marmee promised to me. The children begged to come along. I'm so glad they didn't. That man didn't tell me that you were ill as well, only that you were alive, and I would see you here…"

"It's enough that I am, for now," said Jo. "I don't intend to die. Haven't had time to give much thought to it, but I suppose I'd better not."

Meg did not answer, and Jo would have been content not to speak, if silence did not make her pulse quicken with thoughts of Beth's attack the night before, with questions about what had befallen her parents. There were so many things she needed to know - had they been in pain? Had they, in their final moments, known their attacker for what it was? Had Beth known them, if indeed it had been Beth at all?

"New York," Jo choked out, just as she thought one or the both of them would start crying. "That's where you can go. I know people there, and John will be able to find work, and… and there are so many parks, and a museum, and children for Daisy and Demi to play with. I'll go to see you when this is all over, or send Laurie if I can't. And…"

Several minutes passed in this agreeable fantasy, in which Jo described the boarding house in New York, the weather, the carriages, every shop and street that she could remember. She did not notice at first that Professor Bhaer had taken a seat nearby to listen. She did notice that Meg looked at her lap and gave no response.

John arrived, along with the children, and Meg ran into his arms, in a way that made Jo think that her every attempt to provide comfort had failed. Laurie shut the door behind him, and leaned against the frame, as if all of the life had gone out of him.

Only little Demi spoke, explaining to Daisy eagerly in his childish voice what a train was, and that they would soon be going on one.


	22. Chapter 22

As the nights passed, Amy found more and more that she could think. She could waste entire hours in thinking, reveling in it as if it was an entirely new sensation. Mostly she thought about the blood - how alive it made her feel, and how wonderful it tasted. Sometimes she thought of the sensation of cradling a cold body in her arms after the feast was over, and this worried her. She knew, dimly, that she was a bringer of death.

Anka laughed at her. Anka always laughed at her.

"I can't believe that a little thing like that would bother you," Anka said. "You were always one to pursue what you wanted in life, even if it meant snatching it from others. Of course you do the same thing now."

Amy didn't know what Anka meant. She only knew that there was dirt in her pretty blonde hair from sleeping in the earth, and dirt upon her dress, and that she could not stand the scent of her own breath.

Sometimes Anka screamed at Beth, and pushed her about as if she would kill her. Her cry was always the same: "Why won't you speak?"

The first few times that Amy saw this, she observed it all with a detached air, for she had still been too dull to do more than note what was happening. The episode repeated itself perhaps a dozen times, before Amy thought to ask how it was that she could speak and reason, and Beth couldn't.

"I suppose it is because she made no attempt to hold on to her life once I had decided to take it from her," replied Anka, her child-like face unusually contemplative. "She never had any hopes and ambitions of her own, and that it what mortals call goodness. I had hoped for more from her."

That night, Amy began to hope for more from Beth as well. She was, after all, her sister. She sat with her for hours, telling all of the fragments of their life together that she could drag into her conscious memory, and got no response.

"She is feeding on Jo," said Anka, quite merrily from behind them. "She enjoys it so much. I do believe part of her remembers, and wishes to go home."

Amy pursed her lips, turning thoughtfully from Anka and from poor, dull Beth.

"Perhaps Jo will be more interesting."

Amy did not answer, but began to wonder if it would be possible leave Anka before she could see what sort of a monster Jo might make. Could she run away with Beth the first chance they got, and go somewhere away from all this?

People that Amy had cared for began to die. Marmee and Father died. Jo would be next, and surely Meg must follow. Anka gloated about it. It was a game to her, a story to watch.

"I've always liked killing families," she said. "You wouldn't understand that yet. You're still intoxicated by blood itself, but it gets boring in time. We have so much time."

"I don't believe I like killing my family," said Amy.

"You're delightful. You always say things as if you're just deciding them even as you speak."

Amy didn't answer, for she was deciding other things as well, and she knew at once that she must not tell them.

———————————————

Night had fallen. The house was strewn with garlic, and the windows marked with crucifixes. A fire was burning in the fireplace, and in this light Bhaer regarded the faces of the five others who sat around him.

Laurie was directly across from him, his face tired. He seemed little more than a boy to Bhaer, as he sat at the edge of his seat, leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees. Though in his exchanges with Bhaer he often spoke in the words of a cynic, there was hope and faith in him yet. He, Bhaer knew, would fight with all his strength against the forces of darkness, for he still believed that they could be beaten.

Meg was calmer than she had been when he'd first brought her to the house, infinitely calmer than she had been when he'd first found her, kneeling in a pool of blood near her father's corpse. He had seen her then as a common woman, a wounded innocent to be rescued and sent away. Then the children had came, and he had watched her speak and play with them as if her family had not fallen apart, and he had known that she was strong, and that he would not forget her. She was silent now, for her little ones were sleeping, and she had given them all that she had. Her head was on her husband's shoulder, and she held one of Jo's hands in her own.

John Brook's stance was that of a husband and a soldier, and it was curious to see the two things mingle in a man. He was neat, calm, and alert. He had not been subjected to the same sights as the rest of them, and Bhaer was glad of it. He would be something solid for his wife to cling to in the aftermath, and he would seem braver and better than the rest of them, for being left unscathed.

Laurie's Grandfather had also come, for Laurie had gone to find him directly after bringing Meg's family. Bhaer could not imagine what had been said between them in the carriage. His first impression of the old man was that he was fierce, but then he had gone at once to hug Jo, and to speak to her and Meg in kind tones that would waver and grow gruff from time to time. He was an intelligent man, who knew well enough that he must wait and listen for news of what had happened and what was to come, yet Bhaer still had the uncomfortable feeling that Grandfather Laurence interrogated him with each glance in his direction.

Jo made up the final member of their little party, and though Bhaer had known her the longest, she was the most difficult to read. When he looked at her he expected to see a girl who was ill, frightened, overwhelmed, a little mad, and still very much loved, but though all of those things had touched her, they did not define her. In fact, he could not define her at all, nor could he guess what she might do, or what would become of her. When she looked at him, he felt uneasy.

They were all watching him, and waiting for him to tell them his plans, to lead them through this. After all, he alone truly knew what they were facing. He had gone a terribly long time without speaking. It was wearing upon them all, and he hated himself for it.

"I wish something would come," said Laurie, breaking the silence. "I can't stand waiting here, with nothing to do."

"I wish somebody would tell us what's coming," said Meg. "I want to know what's responsible for all this, and I'll thank you to tell me and not spare the details."

Jo opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed her eyes. Laurie had a similar look, but shook his head upon seeing that Jo didn't speak.

"Are we just going to sit here waiting all night?" he said, turning to Bhaer.

"We must. There are children and women to think of and…"

"You needn't try and convince me that what we're doing now is right," Laurie interrupted. "But, since we've got so much time on our hands now, why not tell us what we're up against? I want to know everything."

There was a general murmur of agreement from the others, and Bhaer knew that he must go on, but where to start?

"Since I was a young man, I have known these creatures," Bhaer said. Not since his time as an orator in Berlin had he had such an attentive audience. At once, his English felt woefully inadequate, the truth that he must convey too terrible. "And since I ceased to be a young man, I have done everything - all things - to avoid them."

"I cannot say their origins. I know not this. There are not so many of them, and at first I only knew them to be in the Eastern countries — Styria, Transylvania, and other such lands. The belief there is… something about burying your dead. You must do it correctly, or the devil can take them. Nobody doubts in these parts that the dead rise up and walk about at night. In Germany we know of it, but believe it to be a legend. I can remember stories about it from childhood, and as a student, I went to do research on it…"

"And found it was real,” interrupted Laurie.

"Of course not…" said Meg, only half heartedly, more to her husband than any other members of the party.

"And found it was too terrible to be false. In Germany, you know, many children's stories are terrible, about devils and so on that teach lessons to the bad children by cutting off their ears, and little girls who get lost in the woods. But there's always a reason to them, and lesson to be learned. But there is no reason to these creatures. They drink blood, and the kill the good as well as the bad. The ones who they bite don't only become ill in their bodies, but also mind and soul. But they do not go after evil people to punish them. They more often take good people."

"Then why did you tell me to trust in my own goodness to keep them away?" Jo demanded.

It was a difficult question to answer, and Bhaer needed some moments to gather his words and his wits enough to do so.

"There are… different manners of goodness. Passive goodness cannot keep these creatures away, but active goodness and…. engagement with God… I say engagement, not only belief… can. Wearing the cross, if you are Christian, or other religious symbols if you are of other beliefs. Not being the fool for any of the devil's costumes…"

All of the sleep had faded from Jo's face, and though she seemed calm, he could see that her hands were clenched tightly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It appeared as your sister. You could not have known."

"Never mind," said Jo. "Finish what you have to tell."

There was a narrative to make of all this, a story about his fight against these creatures, the knowledge Bhaer had gained, the person who he lost, the events that had made him abandon it all, but he did not have the courage for it. And so, he began to recite the facts he knew, hoping nobody would ask for the rest.

"They are afraid, as I said, of religious symbols. They dislike garlic, and they can not see their own faces in the mirror. There are other… talismans… against them, but one cannot know which is effective and which isn't. They cannot enter a house uninvited. Usually. At least, those who can remember, know that they had to give invitation. Some remember their lives, some do not. Some seem capable of reason after rising from the dead, some do not. They might go after past loved ones…"

"What about treatment?" asked Grandfather Laurence, with a look in Jo's direction.

"If something has been taking Jo's blood," said Meg, "it’s no wonder she's weak now. It's the same after the doctor bleeds you, and one _can_ die if he misjudges and takes too much. If we go somewhere where this thing cannot find us, and take Jo away, won't she recover?"

"I wish I could say yes," Bhaer replied, keeping his voice low, as if speaking the truth quietly could do anything to soften it. "I have only met three people who survived the bite. Two did as you said, and ran away. They were… mad, both of them. They could only be kept in an asylum. Of the two of them, one was found drained of blood some years later. The third was not so bad. The creature that had been feeding on him was killed. I believe that is what we must do."

Meg shuddered, "You said something earlier about…whatever is attacking Jo being her sister. Our sister. Surely…"

"It's Beth," said Jo. "She's so unhappy. Tonight especially. She's hungry, and somebody is hurting her." Jo winced, in a way that for a moment reminded Bhaer of the man in the asylum. "How do I know this?"

"I know not," said Bhaer gently. It was not the first time he had spoken to a bite victim who knew something about the actions of the vampire, but he could not say exactly what connection existed, or how it came into being. "Do you know where she is?"

"Somewhere with trees. She doesn't know."

"Can she see something else?"

Jo shook her head, in an attitude that left little room for further questioning. Meg, as well, looked horrified.

"But if you know something, you must tell us…" Laurie started.

"Clearly she doesn't," said his Grandfather.

"It can't be Beth," said Meg.

"Whatever it is," said Jo, "either doesn't know where it is, or is too clever to let me know. Besides, our first order of business should be planning an escape route for those of us who are healthy, and likely to stay that way."

"That's easy," snapped Meg. "Those cowardly enough to leave you behind can get the train at eight o'clock."

"Along with all brave mothers and fathers with children to think about," Jo pointed out.

"And Grandfathers," Laurie added.

"And don't think you're exempt Teddy," said Jo.

"Don't be stupid. We've been in this together since the beginning, and I'm not going to leave."

"It seems everyone has been in this since the beginning except for us," Meg muttered, in a fit of bitterness that Bhaer thought very understandable given the circumstances. What struck him as extraordinary, though, was how Laurie and Jo exchanged looks, and then promptly fell silent, as if by mutual agreement.

And so, the night wore on, with Meg eventually falling asleep in Brook's arms. .Jo's eyes closed several times, but it seemed that whatever Beth was doing, she would allow her no rest, and so she spent most of the night looking about her with eyes that became ever more glazed and feverish. Laurie looked many times as if he would go over to her, but something stopped him. Bhaer forced himself to not, because he knew it would not help, and he did not think he could bring himself to coax and soothe, knowing it would have no effect. Grandfather Laurence made one comment about "those dear girls next door,” then spent the rest of the night sitting very still, with his lips set as if he was made of stone.

Near dawn, by which point Brooke had also fallen asleep, Bhaer went to kneel by Jo.

"If we try now, to see through your sister's eyes, we might know where she sleeps."

"Somewhere dark, with Amy besides her," said Jo.

"Where?" Bhaer asked, and it was such an effort to keep his voice gentle, when he needed so much more information than she was giving him.

"We should ask Amy. She hates the other Beth."

"The other Beth?" Bhaer asked slowly.

"Beth can see you," Jo said. Then at once she sat up, and glanced around her, as if surprise. She looked at her hands, and then at her feet, and then at the people around her.

"She's gone," Jo said.

Bhaer looked towards the window, and saw the first hint of light on the horizon.

————————-

"Apologize for me," Beth said, causing Amy's eyes to fly open, though the sun all but had its hold on her. "If this ever ends. Please let this end…"

And though Amy knew that these were Beth's first words, that they were important, that they must be attended to, she was so far on the verge of knowing nothing that she could not reply. She thought she heard Anka laugh in the darkness, but then the darkness overtook all else, and Amy slept.


	23. Chapter 23

The long night passed, and dawn fell softly upon the little party. Only Meg and the children had managed any sleep. Laurie thought he ought to feel relieved at the relative safety daylight afforded them, but all he could think was that they must part ways soon. He could imagine a scenario where all of them joined together to triumph over death much more easily than he could imagine any victory when the only ones fighting were Jo, Bhaer, and himself. Simply having everyone gathered in one room had made him feel as if he was doing something, and in a matter of hours he would be alone again. He wouldn't be selfish, though. He would send them away to safety as he must, for at least then there would be no risk that they would die, and their blood would be on his hands.

He walked over to Jo, who was shivering in her corner of the couch.

"I'm going to my office to make the financial arrangements for the trip. Do you want to come with me?"

She shook her head, with a glance at Meg, who was stirring as if she might wake soon.

"I don't want to be away from her until she leaves," Jo explained.

His Grandfather, Bhaer, and Brooke were up already, and Laurie could feel them listening and watching. He leaned over to kiss Jo's temple anyway, not caring who saw or what they thought of it. She did not move away, but her gaze was chillingly blank as he did so. He turned from her quickly.

Locked away in one drawer of Laurie’s desk, there was more than enough money to fund any train journey imaginable. In another, there was a list of addresses belonging to his business associates in New York. He searched his tired mind for anything else that would help his family on their journey, and after a moment's thought, he opened a third drawer where he still kept a few of Amy's pencil drawings, and added one of those to the pile. He wondered if he should offer them something of Jo's as well, in case…

The thought was too terrible, and he rested his head in has hands, wishing he were better rested so that he could be as strong as he needed to be.

It took him some time to notice that his Grandfather was standing in the doorway watching him.

"Good morning, sir."

His Grandfather nodded at him, and then came over to look over his arrangements.

"I see you have everything in order."

"I'm trying to. I want to make this as easy for you and the others as possible. I know you'll look after Meg and Brooke in New York, so there's some comfort there."

"I won't insult you by asking you to go with them," began Grandfather Laurence.

"Thank you. I don't know how we're going to put an end to this, but it would be worse than cowardly to run and leave Jo behind."

"I'm glad you realize that," said Laurie’s Grandfather. There was an odd resonance to his voice, and at once Laurie knew what he was thinking.

"You can't mean to stay," he said quickly.

"I can, and I do."

"Sir…"

"Listen to me carefully now. I know my age and my limitations, so you needn't worry. I won't go charging into battle like some foolhardy youth. There are still practical matters to be looked after, and I can attend to those. I didn't raise you to be an idiot, so you must know that at least four people are needed. If there are four of us, we can make sure that nobody is left alone, even if we must separate."

Laurie shook his head. "No. I- Grandfather, I found the bodies of Jo's parents before anyone else did. Her father was ripped to shreds - blood and bone and scraps of flesh everywhere, if you can imagine it. I've lost Amy, and I might well lose Jo. I need to know at least that you at least are away and safe."

Laurie would have looked away then, had his grandfather not lifted up his chin. Though they loved each other, anything more affectionate than a pat on the shoulder was rare between them, and coupled with his grandfather's serious expression, it made Laurie feel more like a boy than ever.

"What do you think," his grandfather asked, "I'd give to know the same about you? I have no grandson besides you, no relation to spare, yet many a family gave up their boys to the war that just passed, and now I won't run from doing the same, if it comes to that. You need to be willing to do what's best as well, even if it means sacrificing your peace of mind."

Laurie leaned back in his seat, and away from his grandfather.

"My peace of mind was blown to pieces a long time ago," he said with a bitter laugh.

"All the more reason for me to stay."

"And what if I don't allow it?"

"Do you intend to force me bodily onto that train?"

Straightening, Laurie turned his attention to his desk, his mouth set in a thin line. He counted once again the money needed for Meg and Brooke's train ticket, wrote notes beneath his lists of contacts, detailing which they would find most useful, and did his very best to ignore the man in front of him, fearing that he would shout, cry, or otherwise do something he would regret.

"Was there anything else you needed to speak to me about?" Laurie asked finally, when it became clear that his Grandfather was not about to leave.

The old man nodded.

"Out with it then," spat Laurie. "Or else go downstairs and let me tend to this, so that we might get things underway quickly."

The derisive way that Laurie spoke should have made his Grandfather angry, and on one level he thought that it did. Certainly has hands were clenched tighter than usual, his back a little straighter, and there was no hint of approval in the look that he gave him. However, if Laurie needed any proof that his Grandfather was well aware of the gravity of the situation, it was in the evenness of his voice, and the way to did not scold or berate him.

"What are you intentions regarding Jo?" he asked.

Laurie ran a hand through his hair. He was exhausted in mind and in body, and there was no doubting that the strength of his heart had been tried every bit as cruelly as the rest of him.

"To make sure that she lives," he answered, even as he knew that that was a vast simplification of things.

"And after that?"

"How the devil am I to know? I'm not sure that I have any."

"That's a good start," his Grandfather said. "It's best if you don't, and if you remember that in your interactions with her for the time being. If you believe, after she is well and strong again, that your feelings for her go beyond friendship, then that is one thing, but for now I hope that you will keep your head about you."

"Are you implying that I don't?"

"I'm giving warning."

Laurie shook his head, turning once again to his work, though by now it was more or less finished.

"We leave in half an hour," he said, his pen hovering uselessly over the paper, for he had nothing left that needed writing.

"Very well. I'll ride with you, and bid goodbye to Brooke and Meg."

"As you wish, sir."

Laurie waited until his Grandfather had left the room, and then placed Amy's sketch back in his desk where he had found it. It was a selfish move, to be sure, but he could not help but think that he would do better if he stored up every reminder of his departed wife, and of who he had been in those few joyful months before disaster struck.

—————————

Demi was the first to stir, and at his first childish yawn, Meg was blinking sleepily. Jo had thought that Meg looked rather like a child herself, as she slept with her hair falling messily about he face, and her head pillowed in her hands. The illusion was broken, however, as soon as Meg opened her eyes and caught sight of Jo watching her, for the previous night's anxiety was still stamped upon her features.

"I'll help you get breakfast for them," Jo said briskly, seeing how Meg's eyes clouded with emotion, and feeling that her own heart might break then and there if she didn't take steps to prevent it.

"Shall we go to the kitchen then?" Meg asked, with a smile that a look at little Demi seemed to give her just enough strength for. She stood then, lifting Demi up with her.

Jo reached for Daisy's hand, but she jerked away as soon as Jo touched her, running for her mother's skirts. Jo shivered, as she had been doing uncontrollably since Beth's mind had withdrawn from her own at dawn. Perhaps she had been doing it before then, but having hardly been able to keep track of whether she was in the room with her family, or somewhere in the woods being thrown about by the child who looked like Beth, she had not noticed it.

"Don't you want to rest now?" Meg asked, looking her over. "I can prepare some food, and bring it out to you."

"I feel better than I look," Jo lied, for she intended to take every second she could with Meg now, as if time was something that she could store up to sustain her when she needed it later.

Laurie had wisely brought a store of provisions from Meg's home the night before, and the two sisters went through these now, preparing a simple porridge and tea for breakfast, and packing anything that could be eaten on the train into baskets for Meg to carry.

When they had finished, all sat around the table eating, but even Daisy and Demi did not say a word. Jo thought that her food tasted like old metal. Amy had said something similar, and so Jo swallowed as much of at as she could, well aware that all eyes were on her above all else.

"We need to leave for the train station in the next five minutes," Laurie said before anyone was finished eating, for Jo was not the only one with little appetite that morning. They all exchanged glances with each other.

"I can't come to see you off," Jo said, to keep anyone from telling her as much in a tone of pity that she did not think she could withstand just then. "If they check for the marks and find I have them, they might worry that the rest of you will soon become infected."

There were some nods of general agreement, and Jo suspected that the clearing of the table had been very carefully orchestrated, for within moments she and Meg were alone. Both sisters stood up.

"Please send a telegram as soon as you get there," Jo said. "I need to know that you are all safe."

"Perhaps you will come over to New York yourself, when you are well," Meg said. She had the frantic, painful smile of one who would break down sobbing at any second. "Oh, Jo, you won't be able to go home again, not ever. Marmee and Father… Jo, and now you…"

That was all that could be said, and Jo held Meg tightly, thinking that she ought to cry herself. She tried, but she couldn't, for everything seemed to be happening very far away instead of right before her, and she was afraid that she might collapse. Jo shut her eyes tightly, and when she opened them again John Brooke was there, waiting.

Jo pulled away. She had no words to comfort Meg, but she kissed her on the cheek, and did her best to smile, and to stand straight and tall until Brooke had taken her out of the room.

Jo returned to her seat at the table then and rested her head in her hands. There were plans to be made. This she told herself over and over, even whispering it out loud, as if to remind herself that she still had a chance at life, that all of them did.

"There are," said a deep, accented voice besides her.

"I thought everyone had left," Jo said.

"They aren't my family," Bhaer explained.

"What did yours think of all this, back when you used to pursue it?" Jo asked.

"I tried to keep them out of it," Bhaer responded.

"But you didn't entirely?"

"No," he said slowly. "No, I didn't. Not entirely."


	24. Chapter 24

"Who was it?" Jo asked. Bhaer had hoped that she wouldn't, but he knew better than to think that he could get away with half a confession now that he had began.

"My sister," he said. Jo was resting her head in her hands. Bhaer wished that he could reach out and touch her as Laurie so often did, but it was not his place. She did not seem defenseless as she looked up at him as knowingly as he could ever remember her being in New York, but he had seen first hand and many times over the sort of changes that her disease wrought upon a person.

"What happened to her?" Jo asked.

"She was Franz and Emil's mother," Bhaer said, because to say that she had gone mad and then died was too terrible when Jo might very well meet the same fate. To say that they had kept her alive for years by watching her carefully and keeping the creature that had bit her at bay would be too much, and to describe how she had finally been attacked and killed in the asylum where Bhaer had left her, so that he would be free to search out the vampire and cure her by destroying it, would surely be enough to extinguish all hope in Jo. This he would not do.

"Oh," was all that Jo said, and from the tone of her voice, Bhaer felt irrationally as if she must have at least guessed some of it. She sat up, alert now.

"I've learned much since then," Bhaer said, and though avoiding the undead at all costs had been the biggest of those lessons, he'd also had enough years and enough time alone to think on what he had done wrong, and how he might have rescued his sister. He was not grateful for this second chance to save a woman he loved, but he would take the bitter lessons he had learned as his only blessing now.

"I suspect I have much to learn, and very quickly, if I'm going to beat this," Jo said.

Bhaer nodded. He wanted to say that she would overcome this, and be as well as ever afterwards, but he was too keenly conscious that it might be a lie.

"Tonight," he said, trying to think of the logistics of what they must face, rather than the person before him. "Tonight I will need you to watch Beth. You saw through her eyes yesterday night. You must go as far as you can into what she sees, and yet you must be conscious and… and analytical. Able to analyze what she sees, even if she cannot. If you can catch a look of where she sleeps during the day, then we can go there and kill her without risk to our own lives."

Jo looked grave and far away, but she didn't argue.

"I know you must be quite afraid of what you will see," said Bhaer. His sister had not been able to understand and control her visions as he hoped he could push Jo to do, but she had spoken by day about the taste of blood, which she remembered clearly though it had never passed through her innocent lips.

"Leave it to me to be frightened when the time comes," Jo whispered. "Now I only think it's strange that my task is to kill Beth a second time. I thought that I couldn't go on without her the first time she went, and now look at this."

"It's an abomination," said Bhaer, his fists clenched with feelings that he couldn't repress. Jo didn't say anything, but stared past him like one who was already lost. He left her to her own thoughts from then, and when he heard the door open, he rose to greet Laurie and his grandfather.

Laurie, protective though he was, did not object to Bhaer's plans for Jo, which only showed that he didn't understand the difficulties that they were to face. Their course of action set, there was nothing left to do but depart to their separate rooms to sleep.

Bhaer had not slept the night before, had in fact had far too little rest since coming to Concord to deal with the creatures of the night. How he missed the guiltless days he had spent at Mrs. Kirke's boarding house, as he lay against the pillows, staring at the sunny day outside and trying to still the dread within his heart.

.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

"It is time."

Jo opened her eyes to the sound of the Professor's voice, feeling that she had only had five minutes rest, when in fact she'd been fast asleep on Laurie's couch since noon. She had not wanted to be alone when they'd each departed to their rooms to await the coming night, but everything within her felt frozen solid, her own thoughts and desires distant beyond the point where she could express them properly. Nonetheless, Jo was aware of her relief that they'd all assembled once again.

She sat up, keeping her blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Sunset was painting the sky pink and orange, and the cross hanging on the window looked like a black splotch against the sun. Somewhere dark and damp a sister, whom Jo had once loved better than anyone else in the world, was stirring.

"I'm ready," Jo said, hoping that by saying it, she could make herself feel it.

———————————

"I'm ready."

Amy blinked up at the dark of her coffin. Even as a human girl, she had not liked to have her sleep interrupted. Funny, to remember this now.

"What are you ready for, dear?" Amy asked, rolling onto her side to bury her face in Beth's hair. She let her eyes drift shut once more. That last word, that _dear_ , struck her as something transcendent. It felt so good to speak kindly to another creature, after so long. She hated Anka, but Beth she did not hate, and perhaps she could love her now if she was still capable of feeling such things.

————————————

"Jo," Bhaer took both her hands in his, leaning over her on the stool on which he sat. He was so close now, and he had been so sparing with physical contact, that Jo knew that this must be a very important matter. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Laurie and his grandfather sitting, ready to watch and help as need be. She could feel a face pressed against her neck, but it was not an attack, but something gentle, like a kiss. She turned to look, but there was nobody there. Bhaer tightened his grip on her hands so that she looked back at him.

"You must remember who you are, and where you are. The vampire's mind may be confused, but you can't be. Concentrate. See what it sees, but look upon it with your own eyes."

"I want to close my eyes," Jo said, feeling that she must ask permission. She had never done this before, and hoped that Professor Bhaer had. "I can only see this room, and shadows of something else."

Bhaer nodded, and Jo shut her eyes, concentrating on all of her might on what she saw. She could make out old wood above her head, almost touching her nose. She could smell earth, and something coppery. Amy lay beside her, and her skin felt like that of a porcelain doll.

"Who are you?" Bhaer asked, his voice intruding on her vision like something from another world.

"I'm Jo."

"What do you see now?"

"I'm in a coffin."

"You're not," The Professor said, and his voice was harsher than she'd ever imagined it could be. Jo opened her eyes with a start.

"Beth is in a coffin," Jo amended. Bhaer smiled, but there was a deep sadness about him, and Jo closed her eyes again

————————.

"Jo," Beth said. Amy winced. That name meant so many things to her now, none of them the same as it had when she was alive. She wondered what it meant to Beth, who had spoken less than ten words over the course of many months. Did she wish for this other sister now, or was she simply hungry?

Amy began to push her way out of the ground, out of death and dust and into a world where she was the most abhorrent thing possible.

"She's speaking," Anka said, with a smile that horrified Amy, and made her think that she would lose Beth before she even had a chance at having her.

 

————————————-

"Beth is with Amy, and the child," Jo said, frantically spitting out descriptions, as if she could weave an armor of words with which to protect herself. "They're in a shed. Amy is wearing the dress that we buried her in. There's a hole near the chest. Looks like something was clawing at it. The skirt is tattered, and her stockings and shoes are gone. She's standing to the left of Beth, and the child is to the right, looking at the window…"

"They're inside."

Jo nodded.

"Speak about where they are."

"Beth doesn't know. I'm so hungry…"

The Professor gave her a hard shake, and Jo gritted her teeth. She had to concentrate. Something had come up behind her, and she half expected lips to clamp around her neck.

"Don't stand behind me Laurie," Jo snapped. "I won't have you looming over me."

"The window," Bhaer said evenly, as Laurie sat down next to her, "or anything else about their location."

"I don't think it's a house," Jo whispered, shutting her eyes. "It's too small. It smells of… rotting vegetables. They aren't in their graves."

"Very good Jo, go on…"

"It's a storage cellar! But nobody lives there now. I - Beth - if there was anybody about, she would be able to smell blood. Somebody is speaking to her now…"

—————————————

Anka really did look like a child, leading Beth about by the hand, and speaking to her in soft confidential tones as she did. Amy did not understand. Anka had launched into a monologue of sorts about the places that they would go, and the things that they would see, such as she had never spoken of with Amy. She often spoke English, but at times would whisper excitedly in a foreign tongue which Amy did not recognize.

She spoke of Europe and boats, and how they would steal money from their victims and travel as mother, child, and governess. She spoke of how they must carry with them some dirt from their native land, lest they wither away at sea. She spoke of how to attack the old and the very young, and do so sparingly to escape detection.

"She isn't answering," Amy pointed out.

"She will once she's fed," Anka answered coldly. For Beth's sake, Amy hoped that she did.

—————————————

"Don't make me tell you about this," Jo said. She'd described every word that the child vampire said, and every tree and rock Beth had passed as best she could, but now Beth was drinking the blood of an old man. For the first time in her life Jo knew intimately what death tasted like, and she did not wish to say it.

"Open your eyes for a minute."

Jo did. Bhaer did not seem as stern now as he had before. All eyes were upon her, and the scene in the room was like a veil of thin fabric, dimming but not completely obscuring the horrors that were going on behind it.

"The man is resisting, as my father did," Jo said, not stopping to think of why she suddenly knew this. She looked over at Laurie, who met her gaze, his eyes wet.

———————-

"Why don't you speak?"

It was that same question, over and over again, as if nothing had changed, as if Beth's few words meant nothing to Anka if she could not have all of her. Amy did not stay to see what Anka would do to Beth. She could not watch that again, and with sudden resolve, she decided that she would never again have to.

The home closest to the cellar that that three of them had been sleeping in was still inhabited by an old woman, too frail to flee the city as so many others had. She was sick, Amy knew, and Anka had confirmed with her that that was the reason the scent of her blood made Amy feel nauseous. No matter. Amy tore her open, but did not drink. Killing without the euphoria of feeding was a new experience, and Amy knelt in the room for over an hour watching the corpse, and wandering if it would pass some judgment on her. Amy knew that she deserved to die, and perhaps for Beth to die would be a mercy. They would both do so this night, if her plan did not work. She wondered if she would be damned for all that she had done, or if God would take into account that she had led a good life, and that it had not been her choice to go on living after it was over. The idea made her shiver.

"Putrid thing," Anka said, when Amy found her again. At first she thought Beth was not with her, but then she saw her cowering not far off. Amy wrinkled her nose. She had stayed with the old woman's body long enough for the scent of her blood to become familiar, but now it hit her again with full force.

"You'll regret drinking from her," Anka continued. "You'll be ill yourself come tomorrow evening, and I shan't take care of you."

Anka's eyes, Amy saw, were rimmed with red, and there was the slightest of tremors when she spoke. Could she have been crying?

"What do you want from me?" Amy asked.

"Nothing. There's nothing that you can give."

"What do you want from Beth, then?"

"Another like myself," Anka said.

Amy went over to kneel by Beth, who was curled up in a tight ball, and seemed unreachable and very far from the evil in Anka, the evil that Amy knew that she too must possess.

 

—————————-

It had taken some effort not to wince and cry out as Beth sustained blow after blow, but Jo had done it. She had merely described what was happening, knowing that it could not help the others, but needing something to remind her of who she was. Beth saw nothing now, and felt nothing other than fear and hunger. Jo managed to keep her breathing even, but could not control her pounding heart, and wished more than anything that the night would end soon. She did not know how she could be at once so agitated, and so very tired. The others were tired as well. Laurie was looking bleary eyed through her, and Bhaer had begun to slump over exhaustedly, now that she did not need his help for a moment.

"What time is it?" She asked. Bhaer looked behind him at the big grandfather clock on the wall. Jo assumed that she probably should have seen it herself, considering she had been looking directly at it.

"It's nearly five," Bhaer said.

It was almost over.

"They're moving again," Jo said. Again she began to describe her surroundings, which were familiar this time, as they were returning to their resting place. Bhaer had let go of her hand to try and sketch a map of sorts as she spoke, and Laurie had taken his place as quickly as he vacated it.

"You have done well," Bhaer said, when finally, finally, Jo tried to look through Beth's eyes and found there was nothing to see.

——————————

Amy kept her eyes open and glued on the wood above her face. It was the last thing she saw before she went to sleep each morning, and the first thing she saw when she woke each night, but she would not let it fade now. Beth went quiet, and Anka went quiet, all semblance of life gone. Both had seemed to breathe when they were awake, but even that had stopped now. Amy sucked in breath after breath. She could feel her limbs freezing, trying to lock themselves in day and death. Taking Beth's hand, she pulled them both into the light.

Beth screamed.

Amy was blind. The light was everywhere, and she was dying.

—————————

Jo opened her eyes. She was doubled over herself, her breath coming in those sharp involuntary gasps that could happen when one cried very hard for a very long time. Her mouth tasted sour. She could feel and smell the vomit in her hair and down her chest. She blinked hard against the last of her tears, not knowing where they had come from, or when she had started crying. Just a moment before there had been pain so terrible that it obliterated all else, but it had left her just as suddenly and as completely as it had began.

"She's stopped," somebody said. It was Laurie's grandfather.

"Jo," Laurie said. He touched her face gently. He had been crying himself, and Jo could not but think that he looked like a child just then.

"Jo," he said again, as if that were all he was capable.

"You're safe now," said Bhaer, who had kept his wits about him.

"I -" Jo had to shut her eyes, and fight to keep her throat from closing up. He was right. It was day. Whatever had happened to her was over now The room was slowly starting to take shape around her, and she was safe.

She looked around and around the room, her eyes finally resting on the map that Bhaer had drawn.

"It's not exactly right," she said, for though there were many things to worry about, that was the first rational thought that she could hold onto long enough to speak it.

"Can you lead us to their resting place?" Asked Bhaer.

Jo nodded. She thought that she could.

"I need to clean myself…" Jo said, disgust briefly coloring her features. She was thankful, at least, that Professor Bhaer simply nodded, and made no other comment on her current state.

She retreated to one of the bedrooms, undressed, and waited for some minutes until she heard Laurie call that he'd left a basin of water for her outside. She was tired to the point of collapse, and she was grateful for it, for it kept her thoughts and fears from running wild.

"Let's go," she said, once she'd finished. She watched as Bhaer picked up a long bag, and handed another to Laurie. Apparently he meant for her and grandfather Laurence to go unarmed.

This would end today, Jo told herself. It would end in the next few hours. She wanted to believe that what she was feeling was hope, but she knew in her heart that it was desperation.


	25. Chapter 25

They'd been walking for nearly two hours, out past where the town faded into farmlands, and into the place where the farmlands faded into woods. Jo was their leader for the moment, and Laurie could not believe that to be a very fortunate circumstance, considering all he had seen from her that very morning. He could not get the image of her sick, screaming, and absolutely unreachable out of his mind, any more than he could escape the memory of Amy's rages. He had cried to see her in such a state, though Bhaer and his grandfather had remained calm through the ordeal, and it had made him ashamed to be the only one who wasn't. It made an unsettling contrast - Jo senseless and sobbing as she had been for the first hour after dawn, and Jo, grim-faced and consumed by empty determination as she was now. Neither of them were the woman he had known and loved for nearly half his life, and Laurie had no idea how he would go about getting her back when this was all over.

Jo stopped suddenly, as they reached the beginning of a mossy clearing. She looked around her.

"I _do_ know where it is," she said, just as it was beginning to look like she didn't. No one answered. How could they? They were useless until she brought them to meet their foe, and everyone was too tired to waste words here. When, after circling a bit, Jo sat down against a tree, Laurie felt like he must comfort her, but he had been up all night, and she wasn't even looking at him anyway.

"It's because I lost control," she said. "I remembered everything, and now I don't."

"What happened to her?" Laurie asked Bhaer.

"It's difficult to say. At times the human feels…"

"Why do you ask him that, and not me?" demanded Jo, and being no stranger to Jo's temper, Laurie understood the edge in her voice perfectly.

"Do you want to enlighten us then?" Laurie responded in kind, for to do so was second nature by now. He immediately regretted it. Jo put her head in her hands.

"It is likely that some danger befell Beth," Bhaer explained.

"Is it possible that she was killed? You certainly looked like something was being killed." This time Laurie addressed his question to Jo, but not without a glance at Bhaer. He didn't care who answered, if only somebody would tell him something of use.

"I don't think that she was," said Jo. "Don't ask how I know, but I'm almost certain."

Laurie considered asking Jo if she was as certain as she had been about the location of Beth's resting place, but he held his tongue. Normally there was nothing wrong with arguing with Jo, for they were similar enough to understand each other, and this was enough to keep their fights from ever becoming so bitter that they couldn't make amends. Now Laurie wasn't at all sure that they were evenly matched and he doubted he could behave reasonably if he gave vent to his emotions.

"It doesn't matter," said Bhaer. "We can try again tonight. Perhaps seeing it a second time will allow you to keep the memory."

"No," said Jo. "I'll find it today if I have to walk to Egypt and back."

With that she pushed herself to her feet, and began to walk on, the rest of them following behind her. For a long time her movements were slow and aimless, but there came a point where she stopped at a cluster of trees, looked around her, and took a sharp turn, continuing on much more quickly than before. It was not long after that that they came upon a little settlement of four houses with untended gardens and dark windows.

"Here," she said, pointing to a shed. Bhaer walked up in front of her then, and Laurie rushed to follow. His heart was pounding in his throat, and he reached for his weapon just in case.

"Not yet," Bhaer warned. "There's no danger until we get quite close." To Jo he added, "will you come, or will you wait for us outside?"

"It's Beth. I could never let her die alone."

Bhaer nodded, and the three of them went into the shed, leaving Laurie's Grandfather to guard against any possible onlookers, unlikely though it seemed that anyone would come. Laurie wondered if the inside of the small, damp building was familiar to Jo, who followed so silently that he could scarcely imagine she was any more alive than the creatures that they sought to kill. His palms were sweating, and he wondered if he would see Amy lying there in the ripped dress that Jo had described last night. He wanted to look back at Jo to remind himself why he did this, but he did not think he could without thinking of her sisters.

"Open here," Jo said, causing Laurie to jump. She was pointing to a small trap door on the floor. This time, when he reached for his weapon, a long wooden stake, Bhaer did not stop him. There was a ladder beneath the door, which led to a tiny enclosure, scarcely big enough for two people, let alone the three of them. It was almost entirely taken up by rotting vegetables and two coffins, one of which was open and empty.

"Be careful," Bhaer warned, as they lowered themselves down into the cellar. "They are nearly defenseless by day, but they are strong, and have quick reflexes. We must remove the lid from the coffin without coming too close."

"It looks like that one has already been vacated." Laurie said, gesturing to the empty coffin.

"I see that."

Jo had not climbed in after them, for there was no room for her, but she knelt above watching. Laurie doubted that the empty coffin was a good sign, and he was sure that she must know this as well. Bhaer edged a little closer to the one remaining coffin, and used the end of his stake to nudge it open. At once a white, perfectly formed little hand shot out of the coffin with all of the speed of a bullet. It closed around nothing, but it was easy to imagine the creature reaching out and closing around some hapless vampire hunter that didn't know what he was doing - closing around Laurie's own neck, had he tried to do this alone, and leaned over the coffin to catch a glimpse of what was inside.

"There's only one," Laurie said.

Bhaer nodded as if he had not heard, and began to move cautiously forward. Not knowing what else to do, Laurie followed. It was a little girl in the coffin. Laurie knew it to be the creature that Jo had described, for her features were like Beth's, and her open glassy eyes were like Beth's. She seemed harmless and pretty, more doll than monster, and there was something terrible about her clenched fist and the way her eyes did not follow any movement.

"She can't attack more than once," Bhaer explained, and he even touched her raised arm to demonstrate. Laurie wished he wouldn't. He thought he could go his whole life without knowing the rules of vampire hunting, as long as he could see the three that haunted them currently safely destroyed.

"That's… nice to know," Laurie said, after several minutes in which Bhaer said nothing, and made no move to destroy the vampire child.

"I think that you must do it," Bhaer said. "As you can see, Beth and Amy are not here. Jo believes that Beth, at least, still exists. This one here is too strong to attack by night, but I don't believe that Beth is. We must all know how it is done."

Something in Laurie wanted to balk at the task. He was, after all, being asked to kill something that looked like a child. Instead he felt almost eager, and terribly angry. He only wished that the creature's mouth was open, so that he might see its fangs, and know more clearly that the marks on Amy's mark had come from its lips. How long ago it seemed that Amy had first fallen ill. With a shiver, Laurie wished for the days when even his wildest nightmares could not imagine something such as what now lay before him.

"You must first drive the stake through her heart," Said the Professor softly, as if out of respect for the dead. "It is more central than you may believe… here," he touched the child's chest lightly. "You must go directly through the center of the organ. For goodness sake, don't close your eyes…"

Laurie opened his eyes, which he had shut briefly, for it seemed easier to stab blindly. He pressed the tip of his stake against where he estimated the heart's center to be.

"Is this all right?" He asked. Bhaer nodded, and so Laurie leaned in quickly, pushing the stake through skin, clothing and bone.

The vampire made a great, low groan, as if all of the wind was exiting its body, and blood began to flow from its mouth and nose, and even the edges of its eyes. Laurie let go of the stake, which was left to stand obscenely in the center of the girl's chest.

"Am I finished?" He asked, not wanting to watch any longer the steady stream of blood which tinged the girl's white dress in red. Much to his horror, her eyes had begun to move about aimlessly, and her fingers to twitch. It reminded him of pulling the legs off spiders as a boy and watching them move about without their body, before his father had told him not to.

"You must remove her head."

"Oh…"

Bhaer handed Laurie the knife. It felt cold in his hands. He waited, to see if Bhaer would give him a procedure to follow, and when he did not, he sliced quickly into the girl's neck. At once the blood gushed out around his hand. He had expected to behead the vampire in one swoop, but the bones in her neck created more trouble than he could have anticipated, and it took several tries before the head was fully severed .

The blood was pouring out of her in earnest now, quickly filling the coffin. As it did, the girl's skin began to shrivel and fall away, as if hundreds of years worth of decay were taking place in the course of minutes. As her lips began to fall away her jaw fell open, revealing those evil little teeth that Laurie had needed to see.

Laurie remembered Amy standing by the window, glass around her feet, and blood dripping down her arm. He had to shut his eyes for a moment to vanish that vision, but even that did nothing to diminish the creeping feeling of nausea.

"Out," was all that Professor Bhaer said, and Laurie did his best to obey, finding suddenly that he was trembling. Jo reached out to steady him once he was close to the top, keeping hold of him so that he could push himself far enough out of the way to allow Bhaer to rise.

"We rest here for your sake," said Bhaer, who had blood on his shirt. Not being inclined to argue, Laurie stayed where he was.

"Where are the other two?" he asked.

Nobody answered.

"Can you tell us where they are?" he asked Jo.

She shook her head. He bit back a scream.

"Never mind," he said. "We'll find them."

Laurie pushed himself to his feet. His legs were shaking under him, but there was no time to attend to that now. He made his way to the door, Professor Bhaer at his side. Only Jo remained staring at the bloody coffin they'd left behind.

"What is it?" He asked.

"I don't know," she said, but it was enough. He stopped to look at her, and at the scene below. The scent of blood was in the air now, and nothing, absolutely nothing felt real. They had just killed the creature which had very likely started these terrible events, and Laurie felt none of the things that he wanted to feel - no relief, no triumph, no sense of climax or finality.

"It's a start," said Professor Bhaer, as if he was sensing these things. "Tonight Jo will help us to find the other two, or else they will find us."

Laurie had been looking at Jo when he said that, and it seemed to him that something within her retreated at those words. He saw Bhaer make the sign of the cross out of the corner of his eye, but he did not copy the gesture with his own blood-soaked hands.

The walk back home was a long one. Laurie wondered how the vampires made it into Concord so quickly each night. Perhaps they were faster than humans. He did not ask Bhaer, because he did not think he could take a lecture on the behavior of the beast. He kept his eyes fixed on the blue sky, and the colored leaves above his head. His was relieved that even his grandfather, who had seen none of what had happened, did not question him.

At home he went immediately for his room, wanting nothing but to get the blood off of himself and collapse in his bed for the few hours allotted to them, before the sun set and brought them back to square one.

It took Laurie some time to realize that Jo had followed him up to his room, and by then his shirt was already off and lying in a heap on the floor. He looked at her, and back at the shirt, which he kicked under the wardrobe so that he wouldn't have to see the stains upon it. He didn't say a word to her, but went to the washroom and began to scrub vigorously at his hands and arms, until they were clean, and the water in his wash-basin was rose colored.

When he returned to the room, Jo was still there, sitting on his bed now. With a sigh, he sat down beside her, and then pulled her close to him.

"Is this what you want?" he asked.

"Yes."

Laurie buried his head against Jo’s shoulder. He remembered what his grandfather had said, and he remembered propriety, but he could not think of anything more meaningless after what he had done. She was wearing a soft cloak that Meg had left behind for her, and he could feel it against his bare skin. She was shivering even now. He wished that she wouldn't. He wanted for a moment to forget that she was sick, and just know that she was there, with him, that they hadn't abandoned each other.

"Jo," he said, but he could not think of how to go on. He pressed his lips to her shoulder, and then the very edge of her ear.

"We should lie down," she said. "We'll want to sleep before tonight."

Laurie nodded, pulling Jo down with him, and to his relief she didn't leave. Her back was pressed against his bare chest, her head tucked under his chin, and he pulled the blanket up over them both.

"Why are you here?" he asked,

"Do I have to admit my cowardice then?" 

"I'll readily confess to mine. I'm sure I don't want to be alone just now."

Laurie placed another kiss on the top of Jo’s head, for he needed not just to be with her, but to feel her. A minute later, and he was parting the folds of her cloak, letting his hand move down the front of her, slowly lest she want to push him away, and the terrifying thing was that she _didn't_. She was wearing his shirt and trousers once again, having ruined the one dress Meg had been able to lend her. She shifted in his arms, and though she didn't tell him to stop, she didn't need to. He was struck with the sudden feeling that if he turned her around so that he could see her properly, he would look into her face and find that there was nothing there.

"Jo, I…"

Laurie knew that some of his fear must have crept into his voice, for before he could finish, Jo had taken hold of his hand where it lay against her.

"I know," she said.

"Do you really?"

"I know that you love me," she said. "I'm grateful that you do, truly. I don't know what I'd do now otherwise, but... When this is over, we can talk about that, I promise. I can't now. Please understand. This - Beth, and my parents, and that little girl that you killed. I can't follow my own thoughts right now. I try, but it's too much."

The first sentence that came to Laurie's mind was "When _can we talk about it?"_ , but for once he did not allow it to leave his mouth. Perhaps it was because Jo’s voice sounded dead to his ears. She mentioned her parents so dully, as if they had died peacefully years ago, as Laurie's own mother and father had. There was no sense of a new tragedy in the way that she'd spoken, and it was a wonder that she could be here, every bit as close to him as he'd ever dreamed, and so distant at the same time.

"I understand," he said, and though there were many things that Laurie _didn't _understand, his voice was softened with very real tenderness for the woman who lay beside him now. She did not push him away, but kept her hand closed over his, and even this gesture felt shockingly intimate.__

__Laurie wanted to go to sleep then, but it seemed that his brain could supply him with nightmares, even with his eyes open. The little girl's final moments blended with his memories of Amy and Beth, with the knowledge that he might soon have to dispatch them in the same way, and the fact that if his courage wavered, Jo too might become a loathsome thing which needed to be destroyed. He wondered if she shared his thoughts, and was about to ask her, until her quiet, slow breathing told him that she didn't._ _

__Laurie couldn't bring himself to wake Jo by whispering his fears and needs into her ear, nor could he kiss her, love her, and lose himself in the feeling of her, though the frantic, irrational part of him told him to do so would be a beautiful thing for both of them. In the end there was nothing her could take from her but the sound of each breath as she slept, which he distracted himself with by counting._ _


	26. Chapter 26

Grandfather Laurence was there staring over her when Jo opened her eyes. There was a funny frown on his face, as though he were trying to read her, and she supposed she couldn't blame him. She felt Laurie sit up from behind her, taking their blankets with him, and she regretted it, if only because he was warm and she was not.

"Sir.." Laurie started, and Jo wondered if he was going to apologize for lying down next to her. She supposed she ought to have something to say about the situation as well, but there was nothing to explain— nothing at all, in the midst of carnage they were so intimately acquainted with.

Laurie's grandfather cleared his throat.

"It will be night soon, and Professor Bhaer needs everyone to talk together before sunset."

Jo shut her eyes tight against the feeling of disorientation, which was becoming common place to her by now. It would only become worse once night fell, and so anything worth doing or saying needed to be accomplished in those few hours of sunlight left to her. She sat up, noting how unexpectedly heavy her feet felt as they touched the floor. She'd forgotten remove her boots before going to sleep at Laurie's side.

"You dress," she said to Laurie, hand brushing against his bare arm. "I'll meet you downstairs."

The two men locked eyes for a moment, leaning against the wall in the hallway outside, Jo found that Mr. Laurence had not stayed behind to talk propriety with his grandson, but followed her instead.

"You're not well," he said, and though he spoke bluntly, he sounded as gentle as if he were talking to little Beth. Jo's cheeks burned with what she realized distantly must be shame, for needing to be spoken to in such a way.

"I don't suppose I am," she said, straightening. "But then I never shall be if I don't push through tonight and bring this to a close."

She smiled, and tried not to think of how she would go on if she could not destroy Beth right away, or worse still what would be left of herself life once this was truly over.

"Somebody should have stayed with you today. The Professor or myself."

Not knowing what to say, Jo kept silent. There would be no reprimand, this she knew. She'd fallen, and at the bottom was that freedom granted to the ill or the mad.

"Fair enough," she said, swallowing hard.

"Everything that you do means a great deal to him."

"I know that."

Downstairs the professor was sitting at the great dining room table, looking very much out of place in the room which Amy had designed to host vast dinner parties. Somebody had prepared a supper consisting of bread, cheese, baked potatoes, and apples— the kinds of foods that a pair of men, who had not been brought up to be able to run a kitchen, could come up with by themselves. Jo wasn't hungry, but she ate what was pushed towards her, and soon Laurie joined them and began to silently swallow down his meal.

"We must choose what is our greatest goal this night," said Bhaer. Jo rested her head against the table. She remembered the old Pickwick club meetings with her sisters and Laurie, and how she'd always made sure to call the meeting to order before beginning it, with a sharp rap on the table and her deepest, most authoritative voice. Bhaer just launched right into things, and it was terribly incongruous.

"Jo…" it was Laurie calling her back to reality, and she sat up, for she knew she must listen with all her might.

"It is no simple task, to follow the undead," said Bhaer. "We have two of them to be stopped. I hope that we can find Beth very easily, and Amy with her. But we know that something happened to them early yesterday morning, and we know not what. It is possible that they will be separate. When we kill only Beth, then we cannot use her to follow Amy, if they come together again. We may never find her blind."

"Who will suffer worse if we don't destroy her quickly?" asked Laurie, who was staring at Jo. "Amy or ourselves?"

"All of use, I imagine," said Jo. "And the people that she kills as well."

"Didn't you say before that she told Beth to stop when she was feeding upon you?" Laurie turned to Bhaer. "What does that mean?"

"Perhaps nothing," said Bhaer. "These creatures have… whims. This does not change their basic nature."

"What of Jo? Can she recover while we use her to search for Amy?"

It was Grandfather Laurence who spoke, and Jo could see the answer in Bhaer's sad face before he even opened her mouth.

"I don't believe so." Turning to her, he added, "What will we do?"

And just like that, everything was up to her. Now was the time to state briefly and truthfully that she couldn't continue to face this, and send the men off to her rescue like a damsel in a romance novel, and damn the consequences. Even feeling as disconnected from the world around her as she was, Jo knew that she couldn't do that.

"We'll find both of them," she said. "Amy wouldn't want to go on like this. I'll do everything that I can to help."

Laurie was looking down at his half eaten plate of food, and Grandfather Laurence was studying her with something hard and determined in his face, which Jo could not fathom. Bhaer, however, reached across the table for Jo's hand, with a nod of approval that she wanted desperately to believe could help her face whatever the darkness brought.

 _The sun is setting_ , Jo thought. _God help us all._

________________________

Bhaer stared out the window at the sun, which was now low and red in the sky. There was no need to secure the house this night. The garlic and the crucifixes had been placed in the window the evening before, and though no lock would be able to keep a vampire from entering the home once it had invitation, these small charms served as a better barrier against the undead than the tallest of walls. Jo was no longer leaning against the table as if she could fall asleep at any moment, but sitting straight in her chair, her arms folded in her lap, with a composure which Bhaer felt most tenderly and was not eager to see broken.

"Beth will eventually know where we are, by the same means that Jo can follow Beth," he explained. He had not wanted to speak to these people about the vampires when he had first arrived in Concord, but now he found that telling them about the monsters helped him to remain calm. He fell easily into the role of teacher, even when the subject was one that he abhorred. "I have never heard of the creatures beginning to drain someone, and not finishing the job."

Jo winced. The movement was almost imperceptible, but Bhaer could not help but noting it.

"None of us will let that happen," said Laurie.

"Then we must know how best to prevent it," Bhaer said, rising to retrieve his bag, and taking out the gun which lay within it.

"The bullets are silver. I have many of them," he explained. "But the gun I only have one of."

"There was one in Jo's bag. Can we use that now?"

Bhaer nodded. Soon Laurie left the room, and came back with a small brown bag, that Jo followed with her eyes. He removed a pistol from within it, which Bhaer loaded before handing it back to him.

"Silver is our best weapon at night. A shot to the heart will kill them as it does a human, if it is made of this. A shot to the head will not, but they will feel it. Fire is useful, but it is slow. The creature may still attack while it is burning."

Bhaer looked down at the table, determined not to shudder, for he spoke from experience. He would not describe to these good people all that he had seen when he'd first set out to kill these creatures, but this could not erase the vivid pictures engraved in his memory.

"What can I use?" Jo asked, and Bhaer sighed.

"Nothing," he said, as gently as he could. "Remain conscious. Know what is Beth's mind and what is your own, watch, tell us what you see. You help us in this way, and must trust in us to help you. You cannot be armed."

"And I?" asked Mr. Laurence.

"Can you use a torch?"

"Very well. If that's what you have, give it over."

A change had come over Jo. Her body was tighter than it had been before, as if she was stealing herself against an attack, and the touching of one mind to another was an attack of sorts, an invasion of the cruelest kind. Bhaer did not need to look at the window to know that it was dark.

"Amy dragged Beth out of her grave this morning," Jo said. Her head was bowed, and she wore a grimace of pain.

"Where is she now?"

Jo wrapped her arms tightly around herself, resting her forehead on the dinner table, a million miles away from any of the attempts at composure he'd seen earlier. Bhaer knew that she couldn't help it, but a part of him was disappointed nonetheless. The night would not pass easily.

"Jo," he said, trying to keep his voice balanced between stern and gentle, for he knew that he must put as much strength into guiding her now as he would into destroying her sisters when they came for their blood. She was pale and shaking, and it disgusted him to think that, at the moment she had been bitten, she had also taken the first step to becoming a vampire herself.

Jo didn't look up at him.

"What are you seeing?" he asked anyway, even as he silently prayed that she would not go as far away from them as she had that morning.

"I feel my skin is burning," Jo answered.

"It isn't."

"Does this mean Beth is in pain as well?" asked Grandfather Laurence. Bhaer nodded, but kept his attention on Jo. The old man spoke as if Beth being in pain was of great importance, but Bhaer could not believe that a monster's pain mattered beyond how it altered the situation for the living that fought it. In this case it served to make Beth more difficult to find, as her discomfort and confusion extended to Jo.

"Remember what I've told you. Look through her eyes, tell us what you see, and don't forget to separate yourself from her."

"She doesn't see anything. It's dark. She's hungry. I don't know anything else."

"Is Amy with her?"

"I don't see her. Maybe she is. Perhaps Beth is blind. I don't know."

"Do you feel or hear anything?"

Jo shook her head.

"This is ridiculous," said Grandfather Laurence. Bhaer looked up at him, surprised. Laurie did not seem to know whether to watch him, or to watch Jo.

"What is?" Bhaer asked.

"Putting both Jo and Beth through this while we look for Amy. What if we can't find her, hey? Just how long are we to draw this out?"

"Amy will kill many if we don't stop her," Bhaer said, though his eyes were on Jo. He could easily imagine a scenario where they destroyed both Beth and Amy, and kept Jo alive, but lost her anyway. He remembered how his sisters eyes had been dull, how she'd spoken nonsense even in the brightest light of day. He wondered if he had killed her attacker before it killed her, would she ever have been whole again?

"We're down whether or not we sacrifice one to save many," said Laurie, speaking that old question with all of the earnestness of youth, as if it was not something that had been asked over and over throughout the centuries, and never adequately answered.

For once, Bhaer thought it was a vast oversimplification of things.

"Not sacrificing," he said.

"Risking," Laurie offered.

"And torturing," said his grandfather.

"Amy can't be better off than Beth or Jo," Laurie whispered, but Bhaer could tell that he was torn. The younger man had been clutching his gun so tightly that his knuckles were turning white, but he left it on the table now, and turned to Jo, placing both hands on her back.

—————————————-

Amy was in pain, and there was nothing more to it then that. Later, she would realize that the clawed and blackened creature that pushed its way out of the soft earth was herself, but for now the only thought in her mind was that of blood. Blood and blood and blood and blood and blood.

She found it soon enough, first from some dumb creature of the woods, and then from a human. How she'd broken into its house she didn't know. There were a few homes which she could enter on her own accord, without tricks or begging, but she understood so little of how or why.

Amy blinked. She was surrounded by death, and when she looked down at her hand she saw that the skin was charred. She opened and closed her fingers. She could do it, but bits of skin fell away as she tried, and she felt each time as though she were burning again. She was still so hungry.

There were colors, sounds, flashes of things as Amy passed them, and four more bodies before Amy could look at herself again. She slid down against the wall of whatever home she was in, stretching out her arms so that she could hug her knees, this simple movement more difficult than Amy had ever imagined that it could be. She was afraid,. Terrified, in fact. Quietly, in the center of the carnage that she had caused and did not remember causing, Amy tried to trace back the events that had led her to this place.

She had known nothing, she remembered, when she had first became this monster that she was now. She'd known nothing for months, and she was on the verge of knowing nothing again. She was not about to give up this sense of self which had been so hard won.

She had gone out into the sun to escape from Anka or die. She wasn't dead, and Anka wasn't there. Therefore, she must have succeeded. Amy smiled, feeling her lips crack as she did. That was when she noticed something else… the skin on her hands was smoother now, still the color of ash, but the shape at least was that her own hand.

There were other important things to be considered. Amy knew this, even though this knowing of things was very difficult, and took more effort than Amy could remember putting into most things in her life.

Another pang of hunger led Amy to rise, and all other thoughts were abandoned in the search of what she needed most.

——————————————-

The night wore on, and more and more Jo began to lose track of who she was, where she was.

It was not for lack of trying. When Beth rose from the ground, Jo knew, and she reported it. She knew when Beth was moving, and did her best to describe what she saw, but Beth's eyes were as burnt as the rest of her, and what Jo saw was more shadows than shapes, more shapes than objects, and the most she could manage was the occasional broken, "There's a tree." or "There's the ground." or worst of all, "I'm hungry" ( _She_ , warned Professor Bhaer.).

More than once, Jo felt Laurie's or somebody else's hands tighten around her arms. She thought she must have been clawing at her own burning flesh. There was an idea that existed somewhere in her mind or Beth's that if she could just pull it off, everything else would stop.

"It may be coming towards us. It seems her hold on Jo is stronger."

This was Professor Bhaer speaking. Jo thought it had been very long since she'd last heard his voice, but perhaps it was only minutes.

Perhaps it was only minutes that passed, as well, between Bhaer speaking to her, and the gunshot. Jo didn't know. Hours were equally possible.

The pain gathered around her heart, and she couldn't breath. She thought she would die, but it was over very quickly, and when it left her she felt warm.

Somewhere, nearby, she could hear the men shouting


	27. Chapter 27

It was dim and misty on the morning of Beth March’s second death. Laurie jumped when he heard the shots. He looked up slowly towards the window, where his grandfather stood holding the gun that he had put down so that he might hold onto Jo instead. There was a black and red heap in the garden, and Jo was limp and silent as a corpse.

"Stay with her," Professor Bhaer growled, not so much as looking back at Laurie before he ran outside, taking Grandfather with him. With fingers that were numb and cold, Laurie felt for Jo's pulse, and found his hand covering the rough skin on her neck where Jo had first been marked. There was no heartbeat and she wasn't breathing. He closed his eyes.

Slowly Laurie became aware of a strange feeling beneath his fingers, a tingling of sorts. When he dared to look again at Jo, he saw the redness that surrounded the marks was receding. After a few minutes even the marks themselves were gone, as if they never had existed.

Jo's first breath was slow and shallow in the way of someone who was deeply asleep. Her eyes opened, but she made no other sound or movement. She didn't seem afraid. Her skin was very cold, but she was alive. He kissed the top of her head.

Laurie's grandfather peeked his head in the open door.

"You should both come outside," the old man said grimly.

Laurie would not have thought it possible for Jo, but she rose anyway in one abrupt movement. Laurie was reminded of the night in the woods when they had first seen Amy walking the night in her bloody dress, and he had to turn away from Jo, for he could only think of the walking dead.

—————————————-

It was with a strange sense of peace that Jo walked outside into the slowly dawning light of day. It was like being in a dream. She could hardly feel her body at all. Everything had gone cold and far away.

That was the only reason that she didn't scream when she saw the thing lying in the grass. The shape was undeniably human, yet the skin's texture was like that of a burnt Christmas roast. The mouth was open, the monstrous fangs exposed, and blood still flowed out of the hole in the thing's chest.

"Is it Beth?" Jo heard herself ask.

Professor Bhaer nodded.

The peace was beginning to retreat. Why had she been asked to come outside, unless…

"Did you need me to cut off her head?" Jo's voice cracked as she said it, and she made some feeble movement to pull her hand away. Bhaer took firm hold of both of her hands.

"Pray for her," Bhaer said, his voice soft and compassionate. Grandfather Laurence had already bowed his head. Laurie was staring.

Jo nodded. This time when she tried to pull away, Bhaer allowed it. She crossed herself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but when she tried to think of words to bid Beth a final farewell and send her soul to a place where it would be safe and cleansed at last, her mind would not cooperate.

Jo thought of Beth's last smile as she lay on her death bed, months and months ago when death had seemed final. She had left so much behind, dolls and sheet music, brooms, dustpans, and pieces of unfinished knitting, that all seemed infused with the gentle spirit of the girl who had once loved them. These things still existed, Jo knew, in the home where Marmee and Father had been slaughtered. They were tainted now, demonic.

Beth's body turned to ash as the sun rose in the sky. When Bhaer lifted up a handful to scatter it Jo followed his lead, along with Laurie and his grandfather. It was not a task that took a very long time, and soon there was no earthly trace of Elizabeth March.


	28. Chapter 28

Professor Bhaer was more worried in the first week after Beth March's end then he had been when she walked the Earth. If she had truly been a monster, then he would have been able to call her death a defeat, and rejoice over it. Had he been entirely certain that human souls remained innocent even after their body's corruption, then he could have been happy for having rescued an angel from hell's clutches. Even if all theology and philosophy were set aside, he could have slept at night if only the vampire had not been Jo's sister. As things were, the whole affair reeked of slaughter, and not merely Beth's. It was a very long time before he could find any traces of Jo, and when he did, he was much disturbed by what he saw.

After scattering Beth's ashes to the wind, they had all gone inside— Laurie, Jo, Mr. Laurence, and himself. None of them had spoken at first, and Bhaer had not known who to be most worried about. He had merely felt sad, looking at the good people around him, and knowing that this day had tainted them all utterly.

"I had to do it, when I saw her coming," Grandfather Laurence had explained. "That darling girl was never meant to suffer like that."

When neither Jo nor Laurie had seemed inclined to answer, Professor Bhaer had known that he must, for the sake of the poor man's conscience.

"You were right to do this thing," he said. "She will be the first among us to find peace."

Bhaer hoped that his words sounded sincere. They almost were, when he reminded himself how his plans to search for Amy would have continued to harm Jo.

Laurie produced a bottle of white wine from somewhere, the very expensive kind that luxury afforded him. He brought four glasses, and Bhaer was the only one who refused it. He watched Jo, who held the wine glass closed in her two hands for a long time, as though it were a cup of hot tea and she was trying to absorb the warmth from it. Laurie had already had three glasses before she swallowed hers with a gulp and a grimace.

She'd gone to bed after that, and hardly left since. Bhaer did not know if it was exhaustion or something else that kept her there. It did seem she was genuinely asleep most of the time when he came to check on her. She wasn't resistant or uncooperative. She ate whenever food was thrust at her, and calmly allowed Bhaer to examine her neck when he asked her for permission. On the fourth day, after Laurie told her that she should bathe, she got out of bed, washed herself thoroughly, and lay back down; the whole performance had seemed to annoy the young man more than if she had just refused to move in the first place. He'd spent fifteen minutes lecturing her about lying there with wet hair until she'd covered her head in her pillow to block him out. After that he'd left the house for a time, only to throw a pile of clothes at her a few hours later, explaining to her that he'd gone back to her home to fetch them in spite of everything that had happened there, just in case she ever felt like wearing anything other than his nightshirts.

In the end though, Jo needed to be the one to rouse herself, and it took her a full seven days to do so. It was mid-afternoon when Bhaer first heard her moving about upstairs, and early evening by the time that she came down, dressed neatly with her hair pinned up in the same severe style she'd usually worn at the boarding house, when it wasn't disheveled from playing with the children.

"So you make at last your appearance," Bhaer said, with a gesture at the seat next to him, which Jo took.

"Yes," she replied. "Listen, I need you to tell me absolutely everything about vampires…"

——————————-

In that first week after killing the vampire Jo slept all the time, and Laurie hardly slept at all. His dreams wouldn't allow it. Many of them were about Amy, burnt as Beth had been; Usually she begged him for help. In one she'd sunk her fangs into his neck and the sensation had been so pleasurable until suddenly the scene had changed and he was lying atop Jo's dead body. He'd woken up then, and hardly made it to the washroom before vomiting into the basin there.

There were dreams about Beth killing her parents then pounding away on the piano, dreams of a vampiric Marmee raising from her grave, dream after dream about severing heads – Jo's, Amy's, Beth's, the child's, his grandfather's, his own – hundreds of thousands of heads piling up within the decay of Laurie’s sub-conscious.

Of course he asked Bhaer early on what they could do about Amy. There wasn't much. It still wasn't safe to leave Jo at night, and since they had lost their best chance to gain knowledge of Amy's whereabouts, the best they could do was traipse about by day looking to see if she'd returned to any of her old gravesites.

Laurie couldn't but think that Jo had lost her mind, that all of the connections had been severed in those minutes when she'd stopped breathing, and her heart had ceased to beat. He'd heard of such a thing happening to people after a fall or a sharp blow to the head. All of the questions that he asked her in the first few days after she went to bed were about Beth and what had happened, and she didn't answer a single one. It was only when, in frustration, he'd asked her her name and she'd looked at him as if he were crazy before answering him, that Laurie known for sure that there was something left to Jo. He spent a lot of time after that asking her stupid questions about books they'd both read or adventures they'd had, just to reassure himself that she was capable of speech and understanding.

When Jo came downstairs on the seventh day Professor Bhaer must have thought it an abrupt change, only because he refused to harass Jo, and Laurie had very few qualms about doing so. He knew when Jo started to lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling, instead of always curling up in heavy and constant slumber. He was the first to begin to hope that there might be something left for them, when he came into Jo's room one morning, and she responded by sitting up and touching his face.

"You look so tired," Jo had observed.

Laurie then sat down besides her and held onto her hands. She squeezed them, before starting to speak rapidly about Meg.

"She's still alive, you see," Jo explained. "You can't imagine the things I've been thinking these last few days - or, no, perhaps you can. I rather think that you can. I've wished over and over that I was dead, but I'll try to stop that now. Meg is alive, and you're alive, and so am I for better or worse. Thank goodness she left. She hasn't been hurt. She won't change so much."

Laurie nodded. His hands moved to clutch Jo's shoulders as she spoke. There was a gradual awareness that he wanted her just then, and it was almost sickening. She had been lying on his bed all this time, beneath his blankets and wearing his clothes, and in that moment she seemed to be his as well. He ran his hands up and down her arms. A bit of Jo's shoulder was exposed, for his nightshirt was far too big on her, and he was terrified that it would drive him mad. Underneath she would be all bare legs and thighs and ankles. She hadn't brushed her hair at all in such a long time. She was an absolute mess, but then, so was he.

Laurie leaned down to kiss her, carefully at first, and then with more energy after she didn't pull away. He pressed against her in the bed, and kissed her for all that he was worth, burying his hand in the tangle of her hair.

She hadn't pushed him away for any reason since being bitten. That thought was enough to make him stop his progression. He would have run out of the room, if Jo hadn't continued to hold on to the fabric of his shirt. Her grey eyes wouldn't quite meet his, but he could tell that she was deep in thought. He only wished he could know what those thoughts were.

Jo kissed his cheek, then his neck, and finally rested her forehead against his chest in a gesture so confiding he thought his heart might break.

What if she had become a vampire, Laurie wondered. He had a sinking suspicion that he might have allowed her to bite him. He shuddered, and Jo pulled away. He carefully rearranged her shirt so that it covered her more completely, as if to extinguish the most wicked of his thoughts in this show of tenderness.

"Get dressed and come back out into the world, Jo. You can't stay in bed forever."

Jo nodded her agreement, and from that day started her quest to learn all that she could about the undead.

—————————

"When would you give a transfusion to a bite victim, exactly?" Jo asked. It had taken many overtures on Jo's part, but eventually Bhaer had allowed her to go through the contents of his hunting kit. Had she not pointed out that she had been bitten after he had first withheld information from her, he would never have let her do this. He didn't like to look at her going through these things, nor did he like the feverish glint in her eyes as she devoured each new piece of information he gave her.

Bhaer adjusted the transfusion apparatus obediently, placing the needled tip near Jo's vein without piercing it.

"You must place it here, like so," he explained. "and the - the one who wishes to give of his blood must use this side. It isn't safe a thing to be used lightly, and it will not take off the original effects of the bite. It is only to give some strength and time."

Jo nodded. Bhaer knew that later he would see her at the table, scribbling down all of the things that he told her. Laurie had seemed so relieved when she had asked him for a pen and paper, but Bhaer worried that she was obsessed.

"How many have survived the bite?" Jo asked. "Using this or any other thing to help them along."

"I cannot say. I have met perhaps a half dozen, but I don't think that that can be all of them."

"What were they like?"

Bhaer shook his head evasively.

"Each different, of course," he said. "One can not expect the same reaction from several people."

This was true enough. What he did not want to say was that each and every one of them had been raving mad, in different manner certainly, but to the same degree.

"Tell me about each of them," Jo said. "I need to know."

Bhaer gave her a quick description of each of the six people – their ages, their genders, their nationalities, and even a few of the little medical problems that they had faced after, lethargy and anemia, nothing so grave as to frighten Jo and hinder her own recovery.

"I'll take that all down tonight," Jo said, business-like. She paused, and then said, in a different tone, "I've tried to write about my own experiences with this, but it's very difficult. I can't make sense of it."

"You mustn't try to. Forget it if you can."

"Impossible. Nearly everything that was my life before this started is gone. It's not as though I can go back."

"Then you must trust in your friends to bring you forward," Bhaer said. He took Jo’s hands, resolving that it was his duty to do just that.

——————————

Laurie didn't know how to feel when Professor Bhaer announced one night that the two of them must go out in search of Amy, and any other revenant creatures that had been created. How he had found himself in the role of the vampire hunter's assistant he hardly knew, particularly when the other two explicitly were not invited along on this mission.

Bhaer had been reluctant from the start to tell Jo any of the things that she wanted to know about the vampires, but he repeated his lesson on defending the home from possible invasion with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. And thus she and Laurie’s grandfather were left behind with all of the crosses, garlic, and holy water that they could wish for, and the instructions to stay alert and not to look at the window no matter who or what called them from outside.

It had been a long time since Laurie had been outdoors at night. At one point he would have found the stars and the cool darkness beautiful, but like so many other things in his life, the night had taken on a sinister edge that he did not think would every be erased.

"We're human bait, I suppose," Laurie said. He had his gun with its silver bullets, as well as his wooden crucifix for protection. He would've preferred to call himself a mighty hunter, but he wasn't, and that was truth of it.

It was just as well that they did not find anything that night, nor even after the eighth and ninth of their nocturnal roamings. Just as well, except that there would never be an end to it until Amy was found.

"What are we to do?" Laurie asked one morning, as he and Bhaer were returning home.

"It is possible," said Bhaer, "that Amy burned at the same time Beth did, and was unable to save herself."

"Possible," Laurie agreed, "but you don't sound as if you think it likely."

Bhaer frowned. "There have been no further deaths in these last weeks. She cannot be in Concord. The vampire must feed to survive."

"Are we to search the whole world for her?" 

"Perhaps not. Perhaps it is time for you to go somewhere far from here, where you can be happy."

"Excellent idea. What place would that be exactly?"

Bhaer did not answer.

"I must leave soon myself," he said instead. "My nephews wait for me in New York. I will take Jo with me, if she will have me."

Laurie spun around to face him. "You can't mean to propose to Jo."

"Not yet. I don't believe she is ready to give a true answer with a clear heart."

Laurie nodded, looking down at the ground in deep thought.

"It would be cruel to ask too soon," Professor Bhaer said. "Or to speak of it."

"I understand completely," Laurie said, because he did. There had been so much upheaval in such a short time, more than any of them could bear, and if he knew anything about Jo, it was that any attempt at marriage would be one upheaval too many.

"You needn't worry about me saying anything to her about it," Laurie promised.

"You have been a friend to me in this time," Professor Bhaer said. "A friend and a help."

Laurie smiled grimly. He thought Jo would do just about anything she could to avoid losing either one of them. She didn't have much else let, after all. For all that a proposal might do more harm than good, he could also imagine one being more than usually effective, given the circumstances.

He made no mention of these things to Professor Bhaer. He also made no mention of the lengths he would go to in order to keep Jo.

———————

Jo waited until the morning dawned bright and she felt more than usually able to handle things, before making the walk from Laurie's home to her own abandoned one. She hadn't been there since the night before Laurie had found her lying in the woods. It was something that she needed to do, and needed to see. She penned a note before leaving. The others were sleeping. She did not want them to be afraid if they woke and didn't find her, but she didn't want them to accompany her, either.

The door was wide open when she arrived. It hadn't been so long, but already the place looked abandoned.

There was blood all over the living room, dried and black, but unmistakable. This was no surprise. There had been something of this in Beth's memories, which Jo had shared— flashes of her father being ripped to pieces. Jo shut her eyes and simply stood there in this place, where death had happened in the worst way possible. It was crucial that she know about it. She wanted very badly to cry, but she couldn't. Instead she went to the kitchen where the rags were kept, wet one, and began to rub the blood stains off the piano. There was nothing that she could do for the walls or for the floor, but there were other things that she could help. Getting the blood off the windows wasn't difficult at all.

Dust and cobwebs were everywhere, and there was spoiled milk and rotting fruit in the kitchen. The loaf of rock hard bread must have been the last thing that Hannah had ever baked, and for one absurd moment Jo wondered if she could keep it somehow, before throwing it out with the rest.

The cleaning went on for hours, but it was not the release that Jo had hoped for. She needed to say goodbye. She needed to understand, and she didn't. She needed to find a safe place within her to keep the love of her family and all of the valuable lessons that they had taught her.

Finally she made her way to Marmee and Father's room. The bed was unmade, something that she had hardly ever seen. The blankets, cast on the ground, spoke of some late night flight to see what was the matter. Jo picked them up to return them to the proper place, and somehow ended up sitting on the bed clutching them.

This it what she had come home for, she realized. The cleaning had been a farce. The only thing left to her was to spend some short period of time surrounded by the things that had belonged to her family, then leave this house behind, or else erase all traces of the past from it if she could find no place else to live.

Laurie came to collect her not long after she had settled down. He was predictable in that way. She doubted he had waited five minutes after seeing where she'd gone. She let go of the blanket she had been holding, self-conscious that she'd been sitting there doing this thing, and not engaged in some pursuit. She wished he could have arrived when she was still cleaning, and she could've used that fact to explain to him that she was better, she was fine.

He sat down next to her quietly, and put his arm over her shoulder. Jo was grateful for the silence, if nothing else.

"What happened to the bodies?" Jo asked. "Is there a grave somewhere?"

"I believe they were burned to prevent…"

"I know. And they would have lost their heads as well. Doesn't matter. This house is a grave in and of itself."

Laurie nodded.

"Go up to the attic?" Jo suggested.

"Is that what you want to do?"

"No," Jo said.

Laurie simply held her, and Jo found it difficult to remember why she had ever objected to this. It amazed her that he was still there after all she had put him through. He was one of the few things left to be grateful for.

"I used to be afraid of such stupid things before this all happened," Jo remarked, after much time and thought.

"Like what?"

Jo untangled herself from Laurie's embrace so that she could look at his face. He'd become so haggard, all stubble and dark circles that made his eyes look almost bruised.

"You," she said. "And I shouldn't have been."

Laurie touched his lips to hers.

"This is what you were afraid of," he said.

"Yes."

"And now?"

"Least of my worries, wouldn't you say?"

Laurie's expression darkened, and he backed abruptly away.

"What?" Jo asked.

"Nothing," Laurie said, leaving Jo to wonder how to deal with the sudden blackness of his mood. She acted on her first inspiration in this case, since she hadn't many others, leaning over him with her own kiss. She tried to make it a good one, but Laurie broke things off quickly.

"I don't want this too be the least of your worries," Laurie said. "Or something that you go along with just because it can't be worse than what's already happened to you, or because you've become indifferent."

"I haven't. Maybe I am indifferent to many other things… I can't help it just now… but at least I know I'm not indifferent to you. We've both seen each other through the worst. Some people would hate each other after this, and we don't."

"What do you want Jo? A friend? A brother? Or…?"

"Everything."

"What about Professor Bhaer?"

"What about him?"

Laurie sighed.

"He's a good man," Jo tried explain. "An exceptional one. I wish you could have known him in New York… and that I could have continued knowing him in the way that I used to."

"What if you had that chance?"

Jo shook her head.

"He doesn't want to tell me things. He wants me to forget about all of this, but how can I? It would be the worst mistake ever. I… I don't want a wedding. I think I could be a wife, but never a bride, especially not with Marmee gone. Teddy, I promised we would talk about this, and now we are, and I want to be with you, and I want both of us to remember everything that has happened… to use it, and learn from it, and try to fix some of it if we can."

Jo had turned pale and excited all at once. Lying in bed she had had so much time to think on all of these things, and finally she had been brave enough to speak them, even knowing how much could go wrong. She reached out for Laurie's hand, and it was only when he let her take it that she felt that she could breathe again.

"We'll be married," Laurie said, as if he couldn't dare to hope.

Jo nodded. He leaned in to kiss her, but she backed away, for their were still things that needed to be said, and she could all too easily imagine them being lost in kisses, caresses, and other things.

"The first step is to find Amy," Jo pointed out.

"After we're married. We'll… we'll do it very quietly, the marriage. No wedding, I promise, but Amy is dead, and I don't think I can face her if I'm not with you entirely."

Jo nodded. Something told her that she shouldn't, but she longed for solidarity as much as Laurie did. At least if they were to marry, there would be one thing in the world that she had a safe hold upon.

"We can marry first," Jo said, "and then we can find Amy, and find out everything there is to know about these creatures. We'll learn enough to make ourselves safe, and then we'll fight. Surely Concord can't be the first city torn apart like this. We can…"

Laurie's kiss was quick, as if to silence her.

"I don't think I could do such a thing with anybody but you," he said, "but we'll do it."

Jo and Laurie left the March home when they saw that the sun was dipping low in the sky, and they would have just enough time to return to the others before darkness fell. They walked hand in hand, each silently resolving to face everything that came, day and night, horror and love, with courage beyond what they'd ever had before.


	29. Amy's Epilogue

Amy stood on the deck amongst the thrall of people. The song of a thousand heartbeats mingled with the sound of the sea, but all she could smell was their blood. She was wore a green silk dress that she had taken off of one of her victims; she had wanted to wear white, but somehow white clothing always became spoiled when she fed.

The women in general took very little notice of her, though a few men did. She blended in with them well enough, but she could not help feeling some apprehension about the journey. She would need to keep her hunger in check, and her hunger was a prodigious thing. Everything else had been arranged - her coffin (ostensibly for a rich European aunt whose last wishes were to be buried in her home soil) would be delivered to her cabin before she arrived there. She'd explained to the ship captain long ago her illness that prevented her from going out in the sunlight. The lie had seemed painfully obvious to her even as she spoke it, but money and a pretty face were worth more than common sense, it seemed. Now it would only be a matter of getting through a month without killing enough people to rouse suspicion.

The first few days of the journey were easy. Amy walked the deck by night, and dreamt. She did not regret Anka's death, but she needed to find more of her own kind. She could not go on forever, so very alone, and hardly knowing her own body. There were things she needed to learn.

The second week was torture. Amy fed off of an old lady, only meaning to take a small sip, and ended up killing her. No matter. It wasn't unheard of for the elderly to die on such long voyages. Amy remembered how Anka had fed off of her blood over and over again, night after night, and wondered how she had done it.

Wondering this made her wonder if she would be able to transform a living creature into the walking dead as Anka had done with her.

Another two hungry weeks, and Amy was half mad with starvation.

This was when she really and truly began to think of those she had left behind… Laurie and Jo and Meg and John Brooke … she thought of them constantly, and hungered for them. She'd left for precisely that reason. The desire for familiar blood became so strong that it nearly helped her in her quest to avoid feeding on her fellow passengers. They hardly seemed appetizing in comparison to those she had known and loved.

The second death was inevitable. A young Italian man. More suspicious, but by that time land was almost in sight.

It was on her last night, fully sated on blood, but far too lonely to be clear of mind, that Amy penned her note to Laurie:

_My Darling Lord,_

_I arrive in London tomorrow. I do not plan to stay there more than one night, and I shan't tell you where I am going just yet. Rest assured that I have not and shall never forget you. I would offer you my love eternally, and ask only the same from you in return. I promise to write you once more once I am quite certain I know how to make this come to pass, and then you can choose to come to me if you wish._

_Your loving,_

_Amy_

It was through kissing the envelope that contained this letter and then sending it on its way, that Amy found the hope she needed to embark upon her new life once she arrived in Europe.


End file.
